When bad pictures ruin good manicures

Posted on May 30, 2014 in Beauty, Manicures |

As you may be able to tell, I’m a novice at beauty blogging.  My first post about my nails was June 2013, so I’m about at my 1 year mark.  Heck, despite being 33 years old, I’m pretty much a novice at beauty – period!  But a while back I did up my nails and for the life of me, I could not get a good picture. So bad was the photo that I JUST remembered what colors they were after looking at my swatch wheels and thinking “I SWEAR I used these colors already… where’s the photo?”

Julep Ciara with Tatiana Accent Nail Manicure

Well, here it is.

This is supposed to show you a manicure of Julep Ciara with a Julep Tatiana accent nail.  In person, it was great.  Ciara is like the back of a beetle, in the best way possible.  It’s a delicate balance of purple and aqua sparkle, depending on which angle you look at it.  I immediately loved the dynamic colors when I saw it in the bottle.  And, I promise, even on the nail it looked good.  But in this picture in the oh-so-crappy lighting of my bathroom, it looks like mud.  An overall BAD picture, indeed!

Julep Tatiana, the accent nail, fared better.  That’s pretty true to what I’m looking at here on my swatch wheel, except it’s a little more sparkly and has more dimension that this photo.  This picture would lead you to believe it’s a flat orange or a metallic orange, but it’s definitely got fine glitter in it.

What did I do wrong?

  1. Lighting: I tried the lighting of my desk area, I tried the fluorescent lamp on my desk, and I tried the lighting in the bathroom, as you can see.  Believe it or not, the bathroom light looked best.  HOWEVER what I really should have done is waited until the next day and attempted to take a picture outside in the natural light to really get the sparkle.
  2. Selfie Syndrome: This is what I like to call the act of taking a photo that someone else really should have taken.  Taking a picture of your own hand can be difficult, especially with an iPhone as I tend to do.  My Nikon D5000 DLSR is very big and bulky, so after a few tries I decided the cell pictures caught enough detail.  Most of the time, they do, but with such a nuanced color, I wasn’t doing myself any favors taking this picture shakily with one hand and trying to hold both still.  I should have asked my husband to take the picture for me – he’s good like that and would have obliged.
  3. iPhone: As mentioned, I use my iPhone 4s for most of my manicure shots.  What I really ought to do instead is find somewhere to set up my portable lighting studio, set up my DSLR, and use my remote to take a proper shot.  If you have even a point & shoot camera, it’ll probably end up better than even the best cell phone camera (unless we’re talking about a stand alone camera from 5+ years ago, then you might be better off with that cell phone).

Now that I’ve properly assessed what went wrong with this picture, I am pledging to pay more attention to the pictures I take of my manicures that I’m really proud of.  Now, will a self-taken, indoor lit, iPhone shot still show up here for a lot of manicures?  Yes – I’m lazy and it really is easier to get decent light and angle sometimes.  And table space can be scarce here to set up that lighting studio.  But I have learned my lesson and will try harder next time!

Have manicure photo tips?  Share them below!