Buddies Buzz Blog

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How to Take the Perfect Profile Picture

In the digital age, profile pictures count. As the first impression you give friends and potential followers, it is vital it’s flattering and representative, but it’s not always easy to get a photo that captures your personality. Whether you’re looking for a picture for a dating profile or for the latest social media app, you want to look at your best.

Below are five tips to ensure your profile pictures stand out from the crowd.

Good Lighting

Lighting can make or break a photo, so take time to make it work for you. Whether you let natural light do the heavy lifting or cheat with the help of a fluorescent ring light, make sure the light faces you front on to avoid overexposure. For a dramatic result, go bright or opt for a more natural glow with softer light. If you wear glasses, check for reflections in the lenses or the dreaded glare.

Dress to Impress

If you want a headshot, what you are wearing will be less important than if you are hoping to capture a full-length shot (headshots are generally a better choice for a profile picture, as it can be difficult to see details of a full-length shot in a thumbnail), but you can still showcase your personality from the neck up. Makeup, hats, and accessories can make a bold statement.

Plain and Simple

Although it can be tempting to have a striking backdrop, a plain colour is a better choice. You should be the centerpiece of your profile picture and a light-colored background is flattering and ensures you are the main attraction. Think of the actor and model headshots you see and you’ll notice how effective the simple background can be.

Looking Great

Decide what you want your photo to say. If you are staring straight into the camera, your image will portray that of a confident, assured individual. Depending on your facial expression, it might be alluring or may be aggressive. Looking beyond the camera or down to the floor can display a thoughtful or coy demeanour. Your expression changes your whole look, so try a variety of poses to find one that best represents you.

Filter-Free

Filters are commonplace on social media but consider whether the effects you are adding are benefitting your photos. If your photo will be seen by your boss, family, or potential dates, do you really want it to have kittycat ears and whiskers? Even ‘beauty’ filters designed to widen eyes or smooth skin can look false. Instead of using filters, try changing the brightness, sharpness, or saturation by uploading photoshop to the Lenovo laptop you use for schoolwork. This improves images without contorting features. Your profile picture should look like you, not a cartoon version of you!

Whatever you choose, you should feel comfortable and relaxed – a profile picture should encapsulate your essence. While you don’t have to smile on your profile picture, do consider that a happy resting face is seen as healthier and more attractive.

How Do Residential Land Surveys Work in Calgary?

Calgary is one of the world’s most livable cities because of its cleanliness, affordable cost of living, and lucrative job market. Given all these reasons, it is no surprise that many people choose to find a home and settle in this city. Or, for others, they see Calgary as an excellent location to invest in and sell land or property.

Regardless, buying or selling land and property is a significant decision that you should think about carefully. When it comes to these real estate transactions, you should work with residential land surveyors in Calgary before finalizing anything. Read on to learn more about how land surveys work in Calgary and why they are critical when making property decisions.

What are Residential Land Surveys?

Residential land surveys are comprehensive documents outlining the measurements of a property’s lot lines. These include the dimensions and location of a property and its surrounding structures, including easements and encroachments. More importantly, the survey will also identify the property’s boundary lines to prevent legal disputes from arising later on.

To create these surveys, residential land surveyors in Calgary may use different techniques. In most cases, they start by researching the property and land in question, then looking up the title deed to identify the rightful owner. After verifying this, they will sketch and map out the property’s land and boundaries to get the correct details and measurements.

Professional surveyors use advanced equipment and tools to streamline surveying and increase data accuracy. Some popular technologies include laser scanning, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), and geographic information systems (GIS) to help surveyors gather large volumes of data at a more granular level. They can also get a closer look at the land through scanners, which can reach narrow areas.

Benefits of Getting Professional Land Surveys

Residential land surveys are generally a staple in property development projects or real estate matters. However, if you are not familiar with them, here are the main benefits of getting a survey before buying or selling property in Calgary:

Know What You Are Buying

In the case of buyers, land surveys are essential to help you understand what exactly you are buying. Aside from confirming a property’s measurements and legal boundaries, you should also assess topographical details to know whether an area is a flood-or-disaster-prone.

This way, you get a complete picture of the property and can make more informed decisions about your purchase.

Determine Optimal Value for Property

Similarly, in the case of sellers, land surveys allow you to look at your property to avoid under-or overvaluing it. Property owners often forget to consider factors like landscape, hardscape, and topography in their pricing decisions. Thus, residential land surveyors in Calgary can help in this regard.

Locate Boundary Lines

One of the main benefits of residential land surveys is locating boundary lines. It is imperative to clarify who owns what part of a particular parcel of land since you can quickly build something that infringes on your neighbor’s property. So, by knowing where your property’s boundaries lie, you can prevent these disputes.

Overall, residential land surveys are essential to assess land or property in more detail. Regardless of whether you are the buyer or seller, the last thing you want is to run into legal disputes or price your property poorly for not knowing the specific details related to the asset. To avoid such situations, make sure to work with a reputable land surveyor in Calgary to help you out.

The Secret of Engaging Visual Contents on Social Media

The Secret of Engaging Visual Contents on Social Media

Where did you not notice the visual contents? Everywhere right? Almost in every social media platform, this type of content is an integral part. They are the contents that attract most of the audience toward a particular post or information. They are used extensively almost in every sector of media. Have you noticed or tried to observe how certain visuals become viral? What kind of techniques gets embossed on them that make them a word of mouth? Are you thinking for a long as about how to create such engaging visual content and put it on social media? Are you tired of musing about the techniques to use on your content so that it becomes capable of attracting more and more viewers? Are you tired of experimenting with your self-constructed ways and strategies? Never lose hope! Stay tuned with us because we will discuss the secret of creating engaging visual contents to put on social media.

Before going deep into the tips, first, let us know what are these contents?

These are nothing but information that is put in a way that moves, has colour, effects, filters, animated texts, sounds, etc. This type of content is a great way to attract the attention of the population easily. Visual content can be of any form such as-

  • Pictures: Pictures are a representation of some event, place, person, occasion, etc. It describes a story within it. Every picture has its own story. However, it also depends mostly on a photographer, and how he chooses to capture an object or a subject. Pictures are captured from various angles such as -worm’s eye view, bird’s eye view, high angle view, low angle view, etc, to create and describe a situation. Pictures can be colourful or monochromatic. There is a famous rule which is known as the Rule of thirds. It is used extensively by photographers across the globe to showcase a subject and to create an appealing composition.
  • Diagrams: These are often referred to as the symbolic representation of information. Diagrams are pictorial. Pie charts, bar graphs, bar charts, maps, line graphs, etc are a few examples of a diagram.
  • Charts: Charts are a type of visual content where information or data is represented by symbols.
  • Infographics: These are visual representations of information. These are widely applied type of visual contents today almost on every social media bases. These are a great way to showcase information to people because it highlights the main topic to people and does not beat around the bush.
  • Screenshots: These are snaps of images that showcase pictures or information from a computer, or mobile.
  • Slide decks: These are nothing but a series of slides that are used mainly during business meetings to discuss strategies, business plans, etc. These are similar to what you create sometimes in the PowerPoint for school assignments, etc. Here, you can select an already built template, edit font size, font style, add transitions, etc.
  • Online videos: Some content is found online such as videos on YouTube.
  • Memes: These are information put in a way that spread smiles (most of the time) among people. It is some kind of culture or behavior sent to a person from another. Nowadays, the internet is flooded with millions of memes.

So, we have a brief idea of what the type of visual contents are, right? Now it is time we popped up the secret to creating engaging visual content for social media. They are simple and effective.

  • Know your audience: It is always better to understand your audience first. It means you should have good knowledge of the tastes of your audience. You should look for what kind of content they are attracted to, and what they expect by analyzing their responses, etc. If you are creating visual content for small children, you should use cartoon characters or so and colorful texts or elements, etc.
  • Basics of creativity: You should always have a clear subject. If you are displaying a picture, it is better if you put a picture with the rule of thirds, and use natural lights. While composing content (picture or video) it is forever good to keep things as simple as you can but in an elegant way. Well! This needs a lot of practice.
  • Use the free resourceful tools: If you can get more for free what is wrong to use them? You should take advantage of certain free designing or editing tools that are available today in loads. Use their features and other facilities like colour palettes, filters, effects, etc to make your content much more appealing. Use different types of the best Instagram editing apps, Facebook cover story editors, etc.
  • Avoid wrong-sized images: You should always avoid posting images of the wrong size. This creates a negative impact on the viewers. The image you select to post on social media should have the proper size, with the correct resolution. This gains public attention. The image should be properly cropped.
  • Text: It is always better to write text with some knowledge of words. Moreover, visual contents with heavily loaded texts are not much appreciated. Content with a very less number of words either. Along with these, your content should be free from several mistakes like sentence framing, spelling, etc. Your content should be grammatical-error-free. Again, it is very important to keep in mind that the font size and styles that you use should go with the type of content you are posting shortly. The spacing and overall alignment should be given importance.

Conclusion:

It is very significant on your behalf that while visual contents for any kind of social media; you should always pay attention to several things as discussed above. These are the steps that will take you up higher if stepped in properly.