Recent times have seen many of us confined to our homes as every nation seeks to control the coronavirus pandemic. While this has been a challenge for everyone, it can be especially hard for those who are making a living or trying to improve their craft as a photographer. Still, as the saying goes, restrictions breed creativity. Frame the situation positively, and you can use it to sharpen your skill and take great pictures even while staying inside your home.
Explore the outdoors
On most days, we come home and simply head straight inside. But if you think about it, there are elements of the outdoors that you can access around your home and incorporate into your photography without ever stepping off the property.
Unobstructed windows on the upper level can provide you with a great view of surrounding trees and landscapes. If you’ve already had swimming pool construction done in your yard, this area for gatherings and recreation also allows you to introduce the element of water to your pictures without heading off to the beach. Even when you’re surrounded by a concrete jungle, heading up to the roof at night will let you fiddle with long exposures to capture star trails and other creative images of the night sky.
Finding the right perspective within your home is an endeavor that can dramatically improve your photography.
Use objects around the home
A lot of ordinary items that you can find around the house may be used to create interesting effects in your photos. A string of Christmas lights, or the mist from a spray bottle, can create dreamy bokeh effects with a shallow depth of field applied. Flat and clean ceramic tiles can provide the perfect reflective surface for product photos, while a colander can throw interesting shadows onto a plain background.
However, you can take your creativity a step further and feature those everyday objects more prominently, even choosing them as the subjects of your photos. Approach it as a challenge. It’s relatively easy to visit a beautiful location or work inside a studio with all the equipment you need to capture stunning images. But it takes greater skill to make mundane items into captivating photos.
Work with natural light
If you’re accustomed to working under the controlled conditions of a studio, staying at home allows you to become more thoroughly acquainted with natural light. The studio environment may be essential to achieving professional-quality output, but it can also turn into a photographer’s crutch. Real-life situations may require a bit of spontaneity and can catch you without a flash or tripod or a selection of lenses to choose from.
By improving your skill of working with natural light around the home, you’ll be able to adjust to the way the quality and angle of light changes throughout the day. Stripping down to basic gear, you’ll make the most of factors you can’t control, and train yourself in the art of finding good natural light.
Even when you can’t leave your home and don’t have access to the gear in your studio, you can not only keep practicing but even improve aspects of your photography by applying these tips as you capture images around the home.
