I am not a professional by any means but photography is something I have always loved. I not only love to take pictures but I love to fill my home with them. So I thought I would share a few tips for taking great pics of your home and all the things you love in it!
My first tip is
turn OFF the flash. The most important thing to creating a great photograph is color (even if you are working in black & white) and the color is effected greatly by the light. In my personal opinion, a flash ruins the natural essence of the light. So if possible take your pictures during the day when you can make use of the natural light and if they still come out a little on the dark side you can fix that later. Here is an example. I took this first picture with the flash and the second without. The second pic is much more natural, I think. (Pause for "awww what a cute doggie" moment).
Next...
Get Low and
Get Close. I take most pictures sitting on the floor. I find this perspective allows the viewer to feel like they are part of the environment rather then looking at a photo from outside the experience. Here, check it out. I took this picture while standing...
And this picture from the floor.
And now that you are on the floor
Get Close. You can do this with a good lens or skip the fancy and just scoot in closer!
Framing a picture is also very important. We tend to only focus on the subject when we snap a shot but before taking that pic also look at the edges of the picture. What is that hiding just to the right? What is at the top of the frame?
Now this can also all be done when you edit your pictures which takes me to my next subject...yup you guessed it
Editing! All the pics above came straight from my camera, no editing. I am not the one to spend hours editing and cropping and airbrushing my photos but I do believe that a simple, easy to use editing program is a must. There are many great ones out there but my current drink of choice is
Picnik. All the basic effects are free and if you want to upgrade the cost is minimal. It is
so easy to use and a great place to start if you have never edited your photos before. Let me show you some examples!
The first thing I always do is crop a photo to clean up the edges (as mentioned above) and to draw your eye to what matters. Here is the pic before it was cropped and after...
Next I used
Picnik to modify the color saturation. I do this to every pic I take. (I went a little drastic on this one but I wanted you to see the difference it can make.)
Picnik then has some really fun effects you can use to spice things up. One I often use is "Vignette" which frames the picture in a subtle dark shadow...
I also played around with some more fun effects. Here is "Cross Process".
And "Orton-ish"
Or even "Neon"
OK, that one was just for fun but there are endless options on
Picnik and all the ones I used above are free! And even if you don't get fancy (or silly) some simple cropping and enhancing the color go a
long way. Try it out!
*Please Note - I was not compensated by Picnik to write this post...unfortunately :)
