Easy Instagram Reels for Photographers

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

In a world dominated by short-form video content, integrating your still images into this new trend can seem challenging. However, there is an easier way to bridge this gap.

Instagram has been pushing short-form video content for quite a while, and it’s clear that this aspect of the platform is here to stay. As photographers, it can feel overwhelming trying to fit still images into video-based content. However, there is an easier way to manage this transition, and that’s where Social Templates comes into play.

The Role of Social Templates

Social Templates is a service designed to offer a variety of templates that help users quickly create engaging and impactful Instagram Reels. These templates allow you to combine video clips and still images, perfectly synchronized to the beat of the music. The best part? This service is integrated into the Instagram app, eliminating the need for cumbersome exporting and importing processes or additional software and apps.

The ease of use and the seamless integration make Social Templates a valuable tool for photographers looking to maintain a dynamic presence on Instagram without the need to allocate too much time to the process. The ability to create high-quality content quickly means photographers can spend more time on other aspects of their business while still maintaining a presence online.

Access and Features

Once you subscribe to Social Templates, you gain access to a private account filled with hundreds of templates, with new ones added weekly. These templates feature trending audio tracks, ensuring that your Reels have maximum impact within the Instagram algorithm. Additionally, if you have a specific song in mind that isn’t already available, you can request it. In my experience, they’ve turned around such requests within a couple of days, although this may vary depending on their workload and the number of requests.

Having access to a constantly updated library of templates and music means your content will always be fresh and relevant, giving you an edge in engaging with your audience. This feature alone makes Social Templates stand out, as it allows for a high degree of customization and personalization while also keeping up with trends.

Creating a Reel With Social Templates

Before diving into the process of making a Reel, it’s important to understand why this service is particularly useful. For me, I often create simple BTS (Behind The Scenes) videos that transition into the final image. But this can be done fairly easily within the Instagram app. Where Social Templates comes to play, for me, is when I need to post something but don’t necessarily have a specific video or image in mind.

In these situations, I browse through the Social Templates account until I find a template that inspires me. This inspiration can come from the music, Reel prompts (which I’ll talk about later), or the placeholder images used in the templates. Once I find a template I like, I click “Use Template” to see what types of media are needed and how many pieces. Next, I head to my Google Drive, where I store all my share-worthy content, and start gathering the assets I want to use. I feel like it’s important to have an idea of what assets you’ll need for the reel in order to save unwanted time jumping back and forth and having to stop in the middle of building the reel to download more images or videos.

Once everything is downloaded, I click “Add Media” in the template and start selecting the images and video clips. A useful feature here is that I can see the template populate as I select the images, allowing me to choose the best options if I’ve downloaded more media than needed.

For video clips, the template automatically selects a section of the video, but you can easily adjust this by clicking the section and then dragging the section to the exact segment you want to use. This means you don’t have to pre-trim your videos before adding them to the template. This level of control ensures that your Reel will flow seamlessly, with each clip perfectly timed to the music, rather than pre-trimming the video and it ending up too short.

After selecting all the media, you click done, and the template processes everything. From here, you proceed to the regular posting process where you add your description, tags, and collaborations. Social Templates also assists with this step through their Reel prompts.

Leveraging Reel Prompts

Reel prompts are a fantastic feature found in the story highlights of the Social Templates account. These prompts provide ideas for what to post and can be used to inspire both the content of the Reel and the accompanying descriptions. This is particularly helpful when you know you need to post but are unsure what to share or talk about.

The prompts, shared as stories, also serve as a timely reminder to post, often sparking immediate ideas. This constant source of inspiration ensures that you never run out of content ideas, keeping your audience engaged and your feed interesting.

Pricing and Value

Social Templates costs $29 per month, or you can save by opting for the yearly rate of $297. This pricing may not be for everyone. If social media is not a central focus of your marketing strategy, or if you have ample time to create Reels manually, this service might not be what you are looking for. However, if social media is crucial to your business but you lack the time to create engaging content, Social Templates is definitely worth trying. Plus, they offer the first month free, giving you a risk-free opportunity to explore its benefits.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C738-Y-RuNN/

The service as a whole is designed to cater to professionals who understand the value of time and the impact of high-quality content on their business. Investing in a service like Social Templates can streamline your workflow, allowing you to focus more on your craft and less on the technicalities of social media content creation.

Conclusion

In summary, Social Templates simplifies the process of creating Instagram Reels, allowing photographers to maintain a strong social media presence with minimal effort. The integrated features and user-friendly design make it an invaluable tool for busy professionals looking to maximize their impact on the platform.

Whether you’re an established photographer looking to enhance your social media strategy or a newcomer trying to build a following, Social Templates provides the tools you need to create captivating content efficiently. By leveraging this service, you can ensure that your Instagram Reels are not only visually stunning but also optimized for engagement and growth.

Sculpture installed at Southport Town Hall

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Sculpture

The garden adorning the entrance to the Southport Town Hall now has a granite sculpture standing among an array of flowers. The week of May 31, the Bill Royall sculpture, “The Moon and The Stars,” was installed the week of May 31. Boothbay Region…

Motoyuki Daifu’s photos capture the chaos of family life

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned family album? There are heaps in photography, of course, since photography has become the “natural” medium of affection. While Japanese photographer Motoyuki Daifu’s family pictures undoubtedly brim with affection, they aren’t the kinds you’d find adorning the mantelpiece or piano. You will, however, find them in a newly-bound, bedside table-worthy photo book courtesy of publishers Little Big Man. The perfect home for such an intimate collection.

My family is a pubis so I cover them in pretty panties opens with a shot of a cluttered kitchen sink. We are in the five-room house Daifu, where his parents, four siblings and cat used to share in the suburbs of Yokohama, Japan. These pictures were made over a period of many years, and the fact of the pictures – the need to make them, the act of making them, the results of making them – certainly changed the relationships between them. “I think this work reflects the initial impulse of my life as an artist,” Daifu tells Dazed. “As a child, I had these pent-up feelings of discomfort towards my family. I didn’t have any space to myself, and was envious of classmates who did. Our relationships weren’t so good, and it was only when I started taking pictures of them that I took a step back to observe the ecology of my family… Family as other people.”

“As a child, I had these pent-up feelings of discomfort towards my family… It was only when I started taking pictures of them that I took a step back to observe the ecology of my family” – Motoyuki Daifu

Daifu was 19 years old when he first started chronicling life behind closed doors, and a few years later his family pictures made their first outing in Nikon Salon in Tokyo. Becoming a “bystander” not only allowed the young photographer to ward off any feelings of wearied familiarity towards his family, but also made the act of “airing their dirty laundry” less awkward or embarrassing, he suggests. Although domestic life has long been an intensely private affair in Japan, Daifu furnishes his gaze over these mundane, anti-Instagrammable moments with an unmistakable warmth and deadpan sense of humour.

“I am the eldest son,” says Daifu, introducing his family. “My mother enjoys her sleep, but her cooking isn’t very tasty. My father is quiet, unlike the eldest daughter, who is a busy body with lots of friends. The youngest brother loves car drifting, while the youngest sister is selfish and free.” The photographer calls them “characters” – a kind of ensemble who, together, acted out a version of their lives which is, here, up for consumption. And there’s a lot to consume. The stage is jam-packed with the Daifu’s debris: toys and toothbrushes, socks and chopsticks. As for the dirty dishes, they keep on coming: the prismatic gleams of soy and miso. Daifu seems to remind us that mess isn’t the enemy but, instead, something unavoidable and meaningful: the bedrock upon which the rest of life ebbs and flows.

“I never thought there was anything special about my family,” admits Daifu, who goes on to stress that there are still big families all over Japan. However, it’s also true to say that families in Japan are becoming smaller and smaller. Daifu’s parents were born in the first baby boom after WWII, and now the birth rate has fallen below replacement level, and decreasing each year. The explanation, according to Daifu? “Uncertainty about the future. Young people can’t afford children, so they have different priorities nowadays.”

While Daifu’s album might be destined to become a nostalgic ode to the big Japanese family, the photographer is clearly less interested in making any social statements than reckoning with his own complicated feelings about family life and photography. “The cat died a few years ago, and most of my siblings are now married or something,” he says. “It’s just my parents left, so they’re moving to a smaller house soon. It feels like a great coincidence that this house is being vacated just in time for the release of the book.”

And why, we ask, is Daifu’s drama so powerful? Partly because it took so long – 17 years to be exact. These snapshots belie the throw-away quality by which we have come to understand them. They have been assembled slowly, which is an invitation to look slowly, too. Flicking through these pages, you can feel the whiff of actual time, a reality that lies dormant under all the clutter we pile on top of it.

My family is a pubis so I cover them in pretty panties by Motoyuki Daifu is published by Little Big Man and available here.

This Artist Photographs Birds On Plants And Branches In A Studio (30 Pics)

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Artist Sanna Kannisto makes sure the birds are the stars of a special stage when it comes to her work. This creative photographer brings birds into a studio, away from the wild, to focus on their beautiful details. Their bright feathers, delicate features, and unique personalities come to life under her camera, turning them into stunning works of art. By mixing her love for beauty with a scientific approach, Kannisto offers us a close, personal view of these birds.

For example, one of her images shows a vibrant pink bird perched delicately on a branch adorned with soft pink blossoms, while another features a sleek black bird resting on a branch with bright yellow flowers. A majestic bird of prey with speckled plumage stands confidently on a sturdy branch, and a small bird peeks through the buds of a bare branch, its curiosity captured perfectly. And well, if you wanna see more, then we suggest scrolling down!

More info: sannakannisto.com | Instagram

Jay Johnson continues to build photography, film business ‘Von Productions’

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

Jay Johnson started his business Von Productions as a way to give basketball players the opportunity to get affordable pictures and mixtapes.

Some three years laters and Johnson is still churning out content for Von Productions. Johnson, who will be a senior at Stoughton High School for the 2024-2025 school year, now does all kinds of photography and film for his business.

“I now do all sorts of photography including wedding, sports, business, senior photos, family photos,” Johnson said. “And on the video side I film weddings and film sports and then I make graphics which include college commitment graphics.”

A graphic made by Jay Johnson for Stoughton baseball player Evan Muchka

Photo submitted

Johnson started Von Productions back in 2021 during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though Johnson plays football and basketball at Stoughton, he’s still found time to keep his business going.

“I just love working with my clients and seeing the joy on their faces when I deliver the content to them,” he said.

Johnson said he wants his business to skyrocket after college. He added that he’s planning on majoring in something around film media and minoring in business in college.

Interested in getting work done? Check out Johnson’s business Instagram page at @von.productions1. You can also visit his website at vonprod.my.canva.site/media.

Lower Marsh: do you have photos from the 50s, 60s or 70s?

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

History

The organisers of a community photography project are keen to hear from anyone with photos or memories of Lower Marsh and The Cut in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s.

Or are you a Ukrainian – recently located to the area? Do you have memories of the 1960s in Ukraine? Do you have any photos with you?

Pedalling Arts are producing a major community photography project around the Waterloo area; a reflection and celebration of the local cultural heritage.

The are looking for historic photographs of the area as well as memories form the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s to be a part of a retrospective. These will reflect working life, especially representing Lower Marsh Market in parallel to market scenes in Ukraine from the same time.

The collection of photographs will be displayed in the shop windows down Lower Marsh and the surrounding area with a digital audio guide accompaniment.

Find out more about the project and register your interest.

A shiny new Yayoi Kusama sculpture has appeared outside Liverpool Street station

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Sculpture

The installation can be found floating in the heart of the City.

Portrait of Humanity: moving photos of beauty and resilience

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

A competition that captures the resilience, beauty and diversity of humanity has revealed its shortlist

Taken in conflict zones, on football pitches and in an Afghan skatepark, the shortlist for this year’s Portrait of Humanity award celebrates resilience.

Capturing a full gamut of human emotions – from joy to grief, connection to isolation – its latest shortlist attempts to understand cultures, communities and people all over the world at a time of tumult.

“Over the past year, headlines have been dominated by tragedy and absurdity; streams of images – of war, protests and brutality – relentlessly flooding our screens,” said the British Journal of Photography, announcing the latest shortlist.

Support journalism that inspires and empowers people
Good journalism has a cost. As an independent media organisation, to publish our inspiring journalism we rely on financial contributions from people like you, who share our vision for a more constructive and balanced media.
Support Positive News from just £1

“Today, we reveal the 200 shortlisted images of Portrait of Humanity, an award that seeks to celebrate what unites us as individuals during times of division. Portrait of Humanity is a call for unity, but it is also an urgent reminder of the shared fight against humanity’s biggest challenges: to protect the environment, choice over our own bodies, and the right to be and love whomever we want.”

The shortlisted images, including those below, have been brought together in a book – The Portrait of Humanity Vol. 6 – which is published by Bluecoat Press and available for pre-order now.

A woman revolutionises London’s football scene

Photograph by Sam Riley

Aged eight, Iqra Ismail, a British-born Somali, found a space for girls like her in football. At 19 she became the youngest to win a Black List award, which celebrates black excellence in English football. Now 22, she’s established as a player, coach and club director. A campaigner and advocate for inclusion in the sport, Iqra runs Hilltop FC in London, which welcomes players from underrepresented groups including Muslim women.

Image: Portrait of Humanity vol. 6 © Sam Riley

A bereaved mother finds forgiveness

Photograph by Wouter le Duc

Diane Foley is the mother of journalist James Foley, who was publicly executed by Isis in 2014. Her book American Mother is about meeting one of her son’s killers, forgiveness, and the failure of the US government to free hostages. Photographer Wouter le Duc was deeply moved by her story. “As we said goodbye, she shook my hand and told me, ‘God bless you’,” he said. “I am not a religious person, but I felt the warmth she radiated.”

Image: Portrait of Humanity vol. 6 © Wouter le Duc

Grateful to be here

Photograph by Aneesa Dawoojee

Born in the early 1940s, Eglon came to England from Jamaica in 1958 and initially worked in a food factory in Vauxhall, London. Life was not always easy for the UK’s ‘Windrush generation’. “It’s difficult for some of us to get along in this country,” he says. “But this country is blessed in many ways, when you see suffering over the world, it makes you think how fortunate some of us are to be here.”

Image: Portrait of Humanity vol. 6 © Aneesa Dawoojee

Breakfast in a war zone

Photograph by Anya Tsaruk

Ukrainian photographer Anya Tsaruk returned home during the war to document her family and friends’ everyday lives during Ukraine’s fight for freedom and independence. Her work examines the complexity of contemporary life in Ukraine and its people. “It offers an alternative view to the simplified and victimised image of Ukrainians often produced by and unquestionably accepted in the west,” she says.

Image: Portrait of Humanity vol. 6 © Anya Tsaruk

Dancing to keep a cultural heritage alive

Photograph by Alex Kurunis

These three women are members of the London-based folkloric troupe, Fraternidad 100% Salay Filial Londres. They specialise in Salay, a form of folkloric dance originating from Cochabamba, Bolivia. The playful dance mimics farmers harvesting and sowing seeds. There are some 370 Salay dance groups worldwide. In 2019, it was declared a protected form of cultural heritage in Bolivia.

Image: Portrait of Humanity vol. 6 © Alex Kurunis

We are all connected

Photograph by Niamh Barry

Niamh Barry photographed this group of people who belong, like Barry, to Dublin’s queer community. It soon transpired that most were connected somehow. “I realised that us queers are bound to almost every queer in Ireland. The queer community is only a fraction of the global population, leading to interlocking pathways generating chains of mutual association that spread out, like a telephone wire, to connect us all.”

Taking back her right to learn

Photograph by Juliette Cassidy

This photograph was taken at a school in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, as part of a series documenting the Skateistan project. Skateistan is a nonprofit that uses skateboarding and education to empower children. More than 2,500 children, aged 5–17, attend Skateistan’s programmes in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa. Half of those taking part are girls, who have faced significant barriers to education since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.

Main image: Anya Tsaruk, Portrait of Humanity

Support solutions in 2024

Positive News is helping more people than ever to get a balanced and uplifting view of the world. While doom and gloom dominates other news outlets, our solutions journalism exists to support your wellbeing and empower you to make a difference towards a better future.

But our reporting has a cost and, as an independent, not-for-profit media organisation, we rely on the financial backing of our readers. If you value what we do and can afford to, please get behind our team with a regular or one-off contribution.

Give once from just £1, or join 1,400+ others who contribute an average of £3 or more per month. You’ll be directly funding the production and sharing of our stories – helping our solutions journalism to benefit many more people.

Join our community today, and together, we’ll change the news for good.

Support Positive News

Painters, spectators take to NMWA Sculpture Trail for Plein Air Fest

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Sculpture

The only thing better then getting to work outside is getting to work outside in Jackson Hole.

The Most Visually Arresting Images From PHotoESPAÑA

Jun 12, 2024 By Admin in Photography

June 12, 2024

With 84 exhibitions and 293 artists, this year’s PHotoESPAÑA extends into all corners of Madrid: there are shows in neo-baroque palaces and repurposed ironworks, in a vertiginous water tower and amid the capital’s lush botanical gardens. With a theme of “perpetual motion”, the festival spans from international names to anonymous discoveries – from a panoramic sample of the late Erwin Olaf’s career in a subterranean centre beneath the fountains of Plaza Colón, to photographer David Trullo’s unearthing of an illicit trove of homemade erotica from the 1930s, taken by a high-society Madrid couple who mysteriously disappeared. There’s a collection of African and Middle Eastern photographers circling themes of exodus and migration; and the convention-defying Consuelo Kanaga, a photographer who died virtually unknown but whose powerful portraits of African-American lives across the US are being newly reappraised. We chose three highlights from the multitude of voices brought together for the next era of PHotoESPAÑA – its first under new director Maria Santoyo.

A recent signing to Magnum’s illustrious cooperative, Lúa Ribeira melts into the communities she captures, including the Jamaican dance hall scene and migrants living in limbo in a Tijuana park, creating spaces where unpredictable encounters can occur. “I am interested in nuns, thieves, and gardens,” she says. “In the rotting body, witchcraft, hotel receptions, and heaven’s gates. Phantoms, funeral directors, and gravity.” She is also fascinated by the ways cultural expression can be liberating, by movements that lie outside of the mainstream, and how power structures work – preoccupations she can trace back to her upbringing in Galicia in northwest Spain, a region whose distinctive traditions were violently suppressed during Franco’s dictatorship.

PHotoESPAÑA showcases her new project, Agony in the Garden, inspired by the emerging trap and drill music scenes in Spain – where numbers of unemployed young people teeter around the second-highest in Europe. Ribeira says she’s intent less on documenting the subculture and its hedonism than reading between the lines, translating its sound and energy into moments that seem to exist outside of time. She sets her subjects in rocky landscapes dotted with illegal landfills, a backdrop that nods to this generation’s late-capitalism inheritance. In that barren place though, Ribeira finds richness in a community sometimes represented as shallow and apolitical. “I think there is something rooted and fearless in the way they articulate the present moment – the financial crisis, the pandemic, the ecological crisis,” she said at the crowded opening of her show, housed in an elegant pink-hued mansion. “This music is a way of connecting as a group of people in this present, extremely precarious moment. People who do not have a lot of money or potential jobs – but they have their phones and that gives them space to communicate, to create, to experiment, while everything that surrounds you is desolate.” Alongside her photographs, Ribeira includes a glimpse into her kaleidoscopic references – the screenshots, film stills, baroque paintings, sketches, religious and mythological imagery she draws on to create work that reaches for a way to dismantle the seemingly rigid structures that separate us.

Agony in the Garden is at Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA, until August 25.

Pin It — Lúa Ribeira: Agony in the GardenCourtesy of the artist, © Lúa Ribeira

12Lúa Ribeira: Agony in the Garden

Young Haiti-born, LA-based photographer Widline Cadet couldn’t come to the Madrid opening of her exhibition Take this with you; despite living in the US since she was ten, she still doesn’t have a Greencard. It’s an absence that’s also conjured in her work – the early absence of her mother, who left Haiti to work in New York when she was a baby, and today, the absence across the ocean of the homeland to which Cadet can’t return. “It’s a dance between where you’re from and where you’re going,” says Désirée Kroep, the exhibition’s curator, introducing the photographer’s haunting work at the Casa de America, a 19th century palace close to El Retiro park.

Untangling the parts of herself and her history she no longer has access to, Cadet peppers the gallery with memories: framed family photographs on a mantelpiece, footage from the celebratory, Haitian funeral of a grandmother she never met, even her former living room and its floral, plastic-covered sofa and gauzy curtains, recreated in one corner. The result is a dreamlike family archive of her own that is suffused with a deep, yearning ache – but also isn’t quite what it seems. The little glitch of an extra, unaccounted for pair of limbs or the strangers on the street that she reimagines as doppelgangers or siblings all act as a reminder of the slippery nature of memory.

Take this with you is at House of America in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA, until September 7.

Widline Cadet: Take this with youCourtesy of the artist, © Widline Cadet

6Widline Cadet: Take this with you

Displayed in a former industrial sawmill, the painterly images of Ukrainian rocket-scientist-turned-photographer Boris Savelev positively glow. Ghostly and melancholic, often taken at dawn or dusk, they “do something magical with light,” says longtime friend and the show’s curator, Adam Lowe. Savelev has been exhibited alongside Nan Goldin in the past, a kinship that’s tangible in the way Savelev trains a deeply empathetic eye on the grimy urban textures he’s drawn to. “So many of these are images that seem to be taken from the gutter, but actually they’re star gazing,” says Lowe. “They’re generous, giving images.”

This is Savelev’s largest retrospective to date, encompassing a six-decade career from Leica to digital, from his hometown of Chernivtsi, to the Soviet Union, and now as a refugee in Vigo, Spain, post the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Together they tell a layered story of social and political convulsion: “When I first met Boris in ‘95, the world was changing and it felt so optimistic,” Lowe says. “The Berlin Wall was down, suddenly there was a flow and a mix, people were communicating and Boris was travelling to Madrid or London or New York. And then in 2014, when Crimea was invaded, something starts to happen with the shadows in his photographs – a feeling of optimism has gone.” But Savelev’s quicksilver instinct for an image remains intact – he doesn’t like his subjects to notice him before the shutter clicks: “When he’s out photographing, it’s like a performance,” says Lowe. “You see him walking along the street and suddenly he’ll feel various things coming together and it’s almost like a dog picking up a scent; his whole body language changes and he’ll be off.”

Viewfinder: A Way of Looking is at El Espacio Cultural Serreria Belga in Madrid, as part of PHotoESPAÑA until July 14.