Behind The Blog Post

Social media is weird. When it comes down to it, we all are much too familiar with VSCO filters, face tune, texting our friends for caption ideas, and re-taking a photo 67 times. But as we consume media, whether it’s looking at blogs or mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, we take what we see at face value. We make assumptions that others don’t go to the same lengths as us for the ‘gram. We assume that the photo and the person’s body hasn’t been edited and that capturing the image was effortless.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is almost never the case. Especially in the blogging realm, photo shoots have a lot of difficult and un-camera-ready moments behind the scenes. As a blogger, it’s my job to create refined and aesthetically pleasing images. However, this doesn’t mean that I want people to think that it comes easy to me, that I’m perfectly styled every moment of the day, or that I’m always doing something blog-worthy. My hope with this post is to show you the typical effort that goes into a blog photoshoot and to help shatter the misconception that the images you see on social media are true to real life. I'll be giving the behind the scenes of a photoshoot where we shot this post and this post, because the situation was not as glamorous as the photos make it seem!

A TYPICAL PHOTOSHOOT DAY AGENDA

5:00 - Head to Whole Foods to buy sunflowers
5:30 - Take the plastic wrap off of the flowers, then wrap them in a brown paper bag for that #farmfresh vibe
6:00 - Shower, blow dry my hair and start getting ready
6:30 - Do my makeup and straighten my hair
7:20 - Pack the car with three outfits, shoes, jewelry, a picnic blanket (which was actually a scarf), and flowers

7:30 - Drive over to Rachel’s house, jamming music the whole way to get myself pumped
7:40 - Arrive at Rachel’s (I was supposed to get there at 7:30 and I’m embarrassed to say that 10 minutes late is the earliest I’ve ever been to a shoot...)
7:45 - (90 minutes until sunset) We arrive at our location, none other than a local NURSING HOME.
7:47 - I change into my dress and shoes in the back of Rachel’s car, hoping not to flash any elderly people. The dress zipper got STUCK so it's literally unzipped in all of the photos from behind!
7:52 - We literally SPRINT down the street to get to the nursing home lawn that we want to shoot in
7:55 - Stage the picnic area
8:20 - Finish shooting in the lawn and neighborhood
8:22 - Change into my next look while Rachel drives to the next location
8:30 - Finish shooting look #2
8:35 - Change and HYDRATE

8:45 - Finish shooting look #3 (our final look) with 15 minutes to spare before sunset!

A couple days later...
Rachel finishes editing the photos! While we choose to never edit my face or body (there’s quite enough of that in media already), she does things that are way beyond my capability to make sure the lighting, coloring, and shadows of the photos are perfect.

Next time you're looking at social media, just remember that the photo...