Photograph Your Home

Ever see those beautiful shots taken on some one's bed or living room?  I know I've looked at lifestyle photography and always think why does my house look so bad compared to their?  It's not that my house isn't decorated or dirty, but it never seemed to have what I though to be a beautiful photograph home.  I decided to play around and start taking some lifestyle pictures around my house.  The truth is any one's house can be photographed and look amazing.  Remember when you picked out your decor, you did so because you found beauty in it.  With that in mind, why should you feel like it's not photograph worthy?

I recently redecorated my bedroom.  We got a new duvet cover, reused pillows that use to be in the living room on our bed, and new curtains.  I love the colors in there now.  Since we are renting and I cannot paint our walls, I have to find ways to add color other than paint.

One night while the girls were getting ready for bed, they decided to go play on my bed, and instead of getting frustrated that they were not in their bed going to sleep, I decided to photograph them.  After all this is what lifestyle is all about, capturing in the moment.

First thing you want to do is remove any clutter that might show in your shots.  I'm not saying go on a super cleaning spree and put everything up because lets face it, we all have some clutter.  There are things we use on a regular basic that need to stay out, but if you see them in a picture they look out of place, ect.  Just move them out of the way for pictures. Here's a before I moved the clutter from my side table and after.


Notice how much nicer the second picture looks just because I moved some clutter.


Once that's done, it's time to get ready for the picture fun!  This is where I would normally test out my lighting, but since I did that before I took the clutter pictures, I'm already there!  Now it's time to catch the girls in action!

I basically told them to have fun!  They jumped around, threw pillows, cuddled, and even cheesed it up for me in a few pics.  I changed angles I was shooting from, moved in closer, and even shot wide to ensure I had a large variety of images to choose from.  It's nice to get a few of these pictures posed, but for the most part you want to capture the action.  That's what lifestyle is all about, capturing the moments!

Here are a few post editing tips to make sure you capture the beauty of your home and focus of your subject.
1.  Make sure you have the correct color balance.  Shooting indoors, especially using fluorescent lights, your images will look very orange/yellow.  This needs to be corrected otherwise you will have a weird color when you finish your editing.
2.  If you had to use a high ISO make sure you keep an eye on grain.  You don't want your images to look noisy.
3.  Keep an eye on what's in focus and make sure you don't have any blurred movement.  Shooting indoors generally requires a lower shutter speed.
4.  Try black and white.  Sometimes it can really make your images look magnificent.  At times there are images that I do not like in color, but when I switch them to black and white they become my favorite!

With that here are some of the shots I got!

While playing around Samantha, grabbed Ava and they fell backward onto the pillows.  

Sammy told me she was tired, so she rolled over to go to sleep, so I snuck around to the side of the bed she was facing, and just barely peeked over the bed and snapped this one!  I love that she was actually looking at me, and how the pillow is covering half of her face.  So cute. 

This was taken right after the above image.  She was till snuggled up under the covers saying she was tired. 

Ava decided to cheese it up for me.  I was trying to capture her jumping up and down, but she saw me right after she fell and this was how she posed for me.  

Now it's time to share some black and white shots!

 Cuddles after their pillow fight. 

 Samantha trying to get Ava to play "bedtime" as she likes to call it...

More sweet cuddles! 

I hope this post was helpful!  It's easy to turn any room into a beautiful photographable room!  Like I said before...Remember you chose your decor which means it's something you like.  Stop trying to compare your room to the one you saw on someone else's pictures.