How to shoot for social media (without it looking like an ad)

By Mariya Harley · London · updated August 2026

Compose for the format, do not crop into it

A horizontal frame cropped to vertical loses two thirds of its information and all of its composition. Turn the camera. If an image has to work in both orientations, shoot it twice — it takes fifteen seconds and it is the difference between a usable asset and a compromise.

Leave roughly 15% clear at the top and bottom of a 9:16 frame. Captions, profile handles and buttons live there, and content that ignores this gets its subject's face covered by a username.

The first second decides everything

For video, the subject or the product must be visible immediately. Saving the reveal for the end is a television habit and it does not survive a feed. For stills, the same principle applies to the thumbnail: what reads at 200 pixels wide is what determines whether anyone opens the image.

Deliberate imperfection outperforms polish

This is the strategic point most brands get wrong. Handheld framing, natural light, an unstaged background and a real voice consistently outperform studio-lit content in feeds, because polish announces that something is an advertisement. That is not a lower standard — it is a different one, and it is harder to hit deliberately than it looks.

Shoot in blocks, not in moments

A content day should produce a bank, not a highlight. Build a set-up, shoot it for stills and motion, then change one variable — angle, prop, outfit — and shoot it again. Ten set-ups shot twice produces a month of posting; one perfect set-up produces one post.

What to bring back from every shoot

• Vertical and horizontal versions of every hero frame.
• At least three frames with copy space — flat background on one side.
• One detail shot per set-up, for carousels and covers.
• Ten to fifteen seconds of motion per set-up, even for a stills brief.