Behind the Scenes of My #Bookstagram Account

Posted August 28, 2019 by Fictional Fox in Bookish Adventures, Uncategorized / 2 Comments

I started my bookstagram account a few months ago because my friend challenged me to. Bookstagram actually became the subject of her dissertation. I’ve always enjoyed bookstagram feeds myself so it made sense to give it a go. I’ve really enjoyed the experience so far and had lots of friendly comments. It’s a very positive community (from what I’ve seen).

What I want to show today is what I do behind the scenes.

The calm before the photos

When it’s a nice, bright, sunny day its the perfect conditions for taking photos in my garden. It’s a bit of a cumbersome task to get everything outside and setup because I need:

  • The Backdrop
  • Camera
  • Props
  • Books

For my bookstagram setup my dad made a purple quick assembly backdrop for me (he’s a crafty one). I’m trying to go for a semi-uniform look on my feed so the backdrop helps gives some consistency. The setup is basically three bits of wood that fit together. Over the next few months we are going to make a blue one and a pink one as well so I can experiment with some different colours.

Here you can see a pulled back view of my assembled setup and then an example of a photo taken in it:

There is the added obstacle of a very nosy dog to contend with during every photo shoot. This week Willow decided to put a big wet paw print on my setup ?‍♀️.

Dogs, eh.

I haven’t perfected my photo taking yet but I hope it will come in time. I try to take quite a few different photos in one go. Not all of them will make the cut so I try to take photos at a few different angles and with different props so I can pick through them later.

See below for a taste of the different shots I went through to try and get a photo of The Modern Faeries Tales by Holly Black omnibus that I was happy with:

Once the photos are taken I edit them in Lightroom where I fiddle with the colours a lot.

After they are edited I queue them up as drafts on Instagram which helps give me a sense of how they will look on my feed. Then, voila! You get to see them day by day.

I’m by no means an expert on any of this but I do find bookstagram quite fun and hope to grow and develop it over time. Feel free to check out my #bookstagram account @fictionalfox ? to follow my progress.


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2 responses to “Behind the Scenes of My #Bookstagram Account

  1. This is an awesome idea for a post!! I also take tons of pictures with different layouts and angles and then pick the best one <3 That is an awesome backdrop thing your dad made you! I just use my table which sometimes makes it really hard to get the angles right because its only one colored surface instead of three!