During these trialing times it’s essential to stay productive from home. Now that we have so much time on our hands why not get creative?! There’s an endless list of things you can either be trying out for the first time, sharpening up your practice with or even revisiting after having put off for a while!
Want to maintain your creative progress from home? Alternatively, you might want to get a kick-start on your portfolio for when lockdown is lifted. How about creating your own photoshoot? Below are our few expert tips on how to carry out a professional shoot within the confines of your own home!
- Shoot with natural light
Possibly the most important tip for shooting at home. The average person doesn’t have a professional lighting set-up, so the next best thing is natural light. Try taking your images in direct access to sunlight, for example, in front of a window. Bright, open spaces will really give you an advantage here! So, test out which areas in your home give you the most optimal lighting and try to avoid any harsh, artificial yellow lighting.
2. Don’t have a DSLR? Don’t stress!
You absolutely do not need to have a professional camera to get a good shot. Most smartphones nowadays capture very good quality images. Plus, no one is expecting something worthy of National Geographic from your home set-up! Play around with a makeshift tripod; prop up your phone with some books or a shelf.
3. Play around with self-timer
If you have your camera set up on a makeshift tripod, you will most likely struggle to take a photo without reaching forwards to push the capture button. Instead, test out the self-timer feature – this will give you time to position yourself without the need to have your upper body extended awkwardly towards the camera. This will require some trial and error, don’t expect to get it perfect on the first try!
4. Rule of thirds are your best friend
Most modern smartphones have a rule of thirds feature that you can switch on in your camera settings. This rule refers to the composition of an image being split into equal thirds, horizontally and vertically. The objects of your photo are then placed at the meeting points of these lines. Composing your images in this way helps the human eye travel across the image more naturally, as opposed to being presented something in the centre of the shot.
5. Play around with mood lighting
Once you have gained a little confidence using natural light, you can even try experimenting with more ambient, mood lighting. Perhaps you have a lava lamp, or maybe there is an orange hue coming through the blinds at night. This can make for some very interesting shots! Use shadows to your advantage and play with low levels of exposure. You never know what you might come up with!
6. Create a shallow depth of field
Some of you may be limited with the amount of space you have at home or outside. But if you can, try to position yourself or your object in the foreground with a decent amount of space behind. The focal lens should then automatically focus more on your desired object to some degree. There are additional things you can do to emphasise this effect, such as adjusting aperture levels (the lower the f-stop value the shallower the depth of field), attaching longer focal lenses, etc. However, keep it simple and you’ll achieve effective shots that you will feel more confident in recreating and progressing with in the future!
7. Have fun and get creative!
Lastly, the beauty of working with limited resources at home is that there are no rules! Use this time to experiment and step out of your comfort zone. You may surprise yourself with some of the results! The current situation here in the UK is very uncertain for a lot of people, but putting your mind towards something positive that you can distract yourself with or even producing something portfolio-worthy is a sure way to make good use of this all this time at home!
We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during this time, and we look forward to seeing and working with you again soon.
Team BMA XOXO