You want to take more pictures of your family at home, but you hate how they turn out. They are dark, blurry, and really yellow. When you use the flash you get red eyes and harsh shadows. What can you do to make them look better? First of all I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again it’s all about the lighting. If you don’t have good lighting everything else doesn’t matter.
Disclaimer: I have loads of personal pictures with bad lighting that I love because of what is in them. Sometimes the sentiment overrides the technical aspects of the photo.
Here are 3 things you can do to get beautiful photos in your home.
1. Find the Natural Light
Natural lighting is beautiful and flattering. When it falls on your subject in just the right way it is magic. Search around your house for where the light comes in. North facing windows offer the most beautiful non-direct lighting for your photos, but any large window will do. This is what I do when I go to my newborn sessions or a family session in the home. I look in every room and search for the large windows. Try to avoid it if the sun is beating directly into the room without any kind of drapery or filter for the sun, except for an exception I’ll mention later.
Once you find the light place your subject either facing it, or for more depth and interest place them so that only one side of their face is towards the light. Below is my little munchkin before he could walk and he still had those chunky monkey thighs. Oh how he’s grown. Sliding glass doors are fantastic! I love them because they bathe the room in such beautiful light. His face is facing the light, and I am to the side. I love the way the light falls on his face and drops off behind him.
Here he is the same day. We have one spot in our living room that I LOVE because there are 2 windows in the corner. Below you can see there is light falling on his face from the front and the left side of his face. There is a window behind me and to my left. The light falling off to the right gives the picture more depth. Light and shadow make for fantastic photos so don’t be afraid of some dark areas in your photos. You will also need to be careful not to block too much lighting by standing between the window and your subject. I move and adjust to make sure I’m not blocking the good light.
Don’t be afraid to turn your subject so that the light from the window hits them from only one side. This is the best lighting because it’s not flat. It falls on your subjects face gradually highlighting the curves and special features that makes them special.
Open the front door. This is the perfect option if it is a dark day and you aren’t getting a lot of light through the windows. I love this option as well when I want the background darkened. You stand just outside the door and put your subjects just inside the doorway. The beautiful flat lighting will fall right on your subject, and everything in the background will be darker. This draws attention to your subject even more.
The light below the window on a bright day is divine. I move furniture, toys, or whatever junk is below the window so I have a clean backdrop. The photo below was taken on the floor of my bedroom below a large window with lots of natural light streaming in.
Here he is looking up towards the window. You can see the light from the window in his eyes and me leaning over him to take the picture.
Look for natural reflectors. By that I mean bright areas that will bounce light back onto your subject. In the photo below the light is coming in (bright intense light) from behind, but the floor is reflecting the light back onto his face which makes it work. Other reflectors might be a white wall, or light furniture.
In this next one the light is bouncing off of the white bedding and back onto his face.
2. Move the action to where the light is
I know that not everything you want to take pictures of takes place by the window. Life happens even in bad lighting. I wish it didn’t!! I do my best to move the action to the best lighting, and if I can’t, only then do I use the flash, but more on that later. For example, the picture below was taken on the day we gave Noah his first taste of solid food. As you can see he wasn’t a big fan, but he is a good healthy eater now. I’m not ashamed to admit I moved his high chair from the place we usually keep it out into the middle of the room where the light from the kitchen window was the best.
See this gingerbread house from Christmas in 2009? I didn’t just take a picture of it where it was sitting when we were done. I moved it onto the special spot at my table right in front of the window.
3. Use any light source you can find.
There are times that you just can’t use the natural light that comes into your home. In those situations you will need to use another source. It gets tricky because you run the risk of motion blur, color casts from artificial lighting, or harsh flash lighting. Here are my recommendations. If you have to use a flash and are able, try to aim it towards the ceiling so it doesn’t hit your subjects full force. If you can’t, try covering the flash with a piece of tissue paper or something to diffuse it. Also check your camera’s white balance and change it to tungsten or fluorescent lighting so that it doesn’t look too yellow or blue.
The picture below was taken on the night we decorated the tree last December. The kids were so excited to get out the Christmas books I keep with the decorations. As a mom these are the moments I eat up. I snuck in from behind with my camera so they wouldn’t see me and pose, or worse yet run away. The room was really dark with only the light coming from the tree and the dining room on the left. I knew I needed something extra so I pointed my flash towards the ceiling so that it would bounce off and fall down evenly.
The only lighting in this picture is from the lights on the tree. Yes there is a major color cast, but it works for me. Artificial lighting gives you freedom to be creative and think outside of the box.
If you take the time to look around and find the spots in the room where there is the best lighting you will get better pictures. Lighting is everything.
Read more from my series “Take Better Pictures”
Find the best Lighting Outside
One Guaranteed Way to Improve your Photos
great tips!! i will be using them… thanks for sharing!!
Love the info Julie, you’ve got some really cute kids!
Great info Julie! We do the Christmas books with the decorations too and that is one of my favorite parts of the holidays. I would never have known you used flash on that photo!