how to get home ready for family photoshoot – GLASGOW Photographer
How to get home ready for a family photoshoot?
Whether your house is small, dark or messy doesn’t matter. Your home is the perfect place for your family photoshoot. The family isn’t a show home. It’s where family life happens. The place where you all sleep, eat, love, live and play… and it’s more beautiful than the sparkly clean houses we admire in magazines. Because it’s all about you and your family and the moments you share together in your home. Interiors on Instagram and Pinterest are beautiful, but they’re not “real” in terms of family life. It’s just an imaginary sub-reality that you shouldn’t want to fall into. A family home is a noisy place, cluttered with toys, with cupboards overflowing with books, smeared windows, fingered cupboards, and a pile of clothes to fold in a corner.
I’m able to create beautiful images in any home and room wherever is small or dark but there are still a few things you can do to make it easier for me. How to get your home ready for a family photoshoot? Below you will read my top tips on how to get the home ready for a family photoshoot.
1. Don't worry Your home is perfect as it is
Family life is chaotic and messy. It’s not always easy to decorate every room perfectly, according to our liking. Sometimes, the renovation stage is never complete. Kids grow up, so things need to change constantly at home. Many of us can’t afford a big house or a house at all. But you know what? None of these matters! All of this is part of the reality we live in. Photos taken at home at that time that show all your life’s chaos are an accurate representation of your family’s every day at that time. Waiting for the ‘perfect’ time and location for your family photoshoot will ensure that you miss out on capturing how your family is right now. Perfectly imperfect, exactly as you are now.
Ignore the piles of toys, and the colour of the walls and love the home you’re in. This is where you feel most comfortable. 20 years from now, you will not care about any of it, but you will still appreciate these photographs.
2. it is all about Natural Light
Photography is all about light. And there is one single big thing that is required during your at-home family photoshoot – LIGHT. I don’t mean lamps and candles; I mean natural light coming in. I’m a natural light photographer so I won’t ring any flash lamps with me. Artificial lighting is not necessary. Any room can be made beautiful if I have adequate natural light to work with. No! It doesn’t need to be huge windows from floor to ceiling. Open the curtains and let in as much natural light as possible. Keep the windowsills clutter-free unless they’re part of the room’s design. If possible, move any bulky furniture or accessories that might be obstructing/blocking the windows.
3. Deep clean is not necessary Just hide the clutter
You don’t need to scrub your floors and deep clean your home before the photoshoot. Your photoshoot is going to take place in your living room and bedroom. Even at the rooms, we are going to stage the photo shoot. There’s always a little mess and clutter in a home full of kids. This is a family home charm. However, it’s worth casting a quick eye over each room and removing any generic rubbish or clutter that means nothing to you. This is likely to ultimately end up in the bin anyway. Hide away anything particularly large that’s an obvious eyesore. Nappy bins, clothes airers, vacuum cleaners, car seats, pushchairs etc are common culprits. This is because they can be an especially bright or dark colour that’s likely to draw the eye and distract away from the people in the photo.
4. Bed and couch your shoot spots
As you know now, there’s absolutely no need to go nuts tidying your house. Places where I mostly photograph families are their living rooms, master bedrooms and nursery/kids’ rooms. Couches and beds are excellent spots for family portraits. So it’s worth paying a bit of attention to them for five minutes. Take any random stuff off the coffee table and bedside tables, plump the pillows and make the bed. Hide cables and mobile phone charges. For visual interest and cosiness, you can layer up blankets and pillows/cushions in different colours and/or textures (cotton, linens, quilts, velvets, knits, crochet, etc.).
5. Turn of light and lamps
Light from lights and lamps makes a room brighter, more welcoming, and cosy in everyday life. However, it’s not needed during photo shoots. Artificial light makes photos look flat and muted, taking away all the crispness and contrast. Additionally, it causes everyone’s faces to look weirdly yellow/orange.
Especially unflattering are spotlights, which bleach out people’s skin and create harsh shadows. Even though it might feel weird, turn off all the lights in the house, including small lamps and spotlights.
6. let your homes show YOUR FAMILY personality
Organize clutter without getting crazy. Do not remove anything that makes your home unique and shows its personality. You can add all these things to your home to give it character and reflect your interests. Keep them where they are. They’re significant parts of your family story we want to capture in the photographs.
Also aesthetically, an image taken in a room full of books, and meaningful decorations is always more attractive to the eye. Make it tidy, but don’t make it too tidy that you risk taking away its character and the ‘stories’ of how you live. You’ll love remembering all these small details in years’ time when you look back at these photos with your kids… The over-loved stuffed fox without one ear, the Gruffalo book, the old green sofa wiped in a favourite place, the puzzle picture hanging on the wall. All these are precious and sentimental details from your kids’ childhood home that you’ll always cherish.
Checklist
How to get home ready for family photoshoot
As people and families come in all shapes and sizes, so do homes. There is no bad place to take family photoshoots. Take advantage of the opportunity to tell your family’s story through pictures. And let’s not worry about the decor.
