Mastering Light: Techniques for Stunning Urban Photography

Overview

You’ve just spent hours curating the perfect post. You ask ChatGPT for caption ideas, you edit the content until your eyes hurt, you line it all up so your feed tells the story you want. And then you finally hit publish. Hooray!

Mission accomplished, right? Not so fast.

The post you just published doesn’t look like what you expected, and you’re only noticing it now that it’s live. Or the UI of the social app is covering the exact part of the image your followers need to see. Or suddenly your grid looks completely off. And just like that, you’re archiving, deleting, re-editing, reposting. Time to start… all… over… again. Ugh!

I’ve been there, I've been a photographer most of my life, and showcasing my work visually has always been important to me. For years I used UNUM to keep myself somewhat organized. It helped, but there were plenty of moments where I was flying blind. What I saw in the app wasn’t always what my audience saw once it went live. And that gap? That’s exactly the kind of thing that breaks creative flow — and can be so discouraging. So I turned it into a design challenge: how can UNUM actually keep creators in their flow instead of forcing them to stop, rearrange, and repair? And that’s where the real problems started to come into focus.

Problem

To figure it out, I talked to five creators — photographers, designers, content managers — and asked them to show me their process. One said, “If I don’t feel confident about how it looks, I just delay posting it.” Another laughed and called the grid a “house of cards. Delete or archive one post and the whole thing collapses.” A content creator pointed out something I hadn’t realized before: Instagram grids don’t even look the same for everyone. Depending on your phone or account, the squares render differently — which means your feed might look one way to you and a different way to your audience. She wanted a way to preview it all — grid view, post view, different screens — before pressing publish.

At the same time, I looked at UNUM’s competitors. None of them were addressing these core frustrations. Not Canva, not Preview, not Planoly. None offered a way to keep images grouped together for easy access. None matched Instagram’s actual grid perfectly. None gave creators a reliable way to know what a post would really look like before it went live. The more I listened and compared, the clearer it became: this wasn’t just a small annoyance, it was a trust problem. And trust was the thread I needed to pull on in the process ahead.

Process

I gathered everything from my interviews into an affinity map. It was sticky notes everywhere — in my head and in FigJam — but patterns started popping out. From that came two personas: the curated creator, who cares about pixel-perfect storytelling, and the conversion creator, who prioritizes consistency and growth over aesthetics. Both had the same underlying need: trust. They wanted to feel confident that the tool they were using wouldn’t betray them when it was time to hit “post.”

That’s when it hit me: my original assumptions were wrong. This wasn’t just about adding another feature. What they wanted was confidence. And confidence is built by understanding the creator’s happy path.

Using FigJam, I mapped out user flows to see how someone could move through the app without friction. But then I asked myself: what would this feel like for a real human, in our messy three-dimensional world?

First, I started flat — sketching ideas in two dimensions. A locking feature to keep posts grouped together. Pixel-accurate previews that matched Instagram exactly. Safe zones that adapted automatically so nothing got lost under icons. A draft vault to protect curated grids, even if the app crashed. Then I imagined how it would feel in real life — scrolling quickly, planning, moving fast. The goal wasn’t just new features for the sake of it. It was to build guardrails that would protect their flow. But sketches and flows can only go so far. The next step was to put these ideas into the hands of creators.

Solution

I built high-fidelity wireframes and brought them back to the same users. When they saw the lock feature, the feedback was immediate. One smiled and said, “This is great. I can save my edits together, and when I’m ready to post, I’ll know they’re safe.” That told me I was onto something. But of course, it wasn’t perfect. Four out of five were frustrated by the multiple lock buttons — they wanted one simple action.

The AI suggestions sparked curiosity, but everyone wanted a shuffle option so they could see multiple variations instead of just one. And more than one person was confused about the AI Drafts button because it looked too much like the general AI button. So I refined. I simplified the locking into one clear action. I gave the AI button its own distinct color so it stood out.

I added shuffle options so layouts could be rearranged by color or by content. And I redesigned the button for draft suggestions — switching it to a folder icon, pairing it with a sparkle, and adding clearer text so users could tell it was powered by AI.

I also updated the preview overlay so creators could see both the single post view and the grid view across devices — just like Instagram actually displays it.These changes set me up for another round of testing — and that’s where I saw the real impact.

Impact

Testing the iterated version, the feedback was mixed but promising. The good: creators loved the single lock button, the new preview overlay, and the ability to shuffle layouts with AI. The bad: the draft suggestion button still wasn’t intuitive. Users were so used to manually pulling in content that they didn’t immediately see the value of letting AI do it for them. One content manager told me, “If it has a sparkle icon, I’ll know it’s AI.” Another said, “I need to see a photo option next to it — otherwise I’ll just assume it’s for adding new content.” Armed with that feedback, I created my most updated version: multiple image selection with a drag gesture, an AI draft button with both a sparkle and a short explanation, and improved labeling across the AI options to reduce second-guessing.Which brings me to the biggest lesson of all.

Reflection

Looking back, this project taught me something I’ll carry into every design: creative confidence matters just as much as creative tools. Because if creators trust what they see, they don’t have to second-guess. They can stay in their flow and focus on telling their story — and that’s the whole point.