How are you?
To many of us, creative people finding inspiration is the most important motivator in our work and daily life. When it comes to in-home photography, now more than ever it is easy to get stuck. Spending all days at home, looking at the same corners might feel like we are living day by day on repeat mode but it doesn’t have to be this way. It is all about how we see and approach things, how we deal with the situation. I strongly believe, even though our freedom is a bit limited these days, we can find our daily dose of inspiration at home if we know where to look. Actually, it’s right here in front of our eyes!
Sometimes we might think we have nothing new to capture as we already photographed every corner of our home (10 times), our family (50 times), pets and all the possible decoration ideas(100 times). But let me tell you this – there is always something to shoot at home. In-home photo sessions are the perfect way to capture a slice of life and create photo-memories for later. With this approach in mind and few points to consider inspiration can come much easier, don’t you think?
Here are 6 ways to help you find inspiration for your in-home photography
1. Always experiment and try new things
Changing subject, shooting style, even settings can lead to unexpected results and take our skills to a new level. If you usually photograph let’s say food, try shooting interiors or family members. Try new projects, challenges. Try different light situation (more about it in the last post), different perspective, different colors or unexpected objects. Play, have fun and make things challenging each day to be motivated to pick up camera and shoot.
2. Think of your days at home as a story you are telling with photos
I believe a story doesn’t need to be extraordinary – the everyday, ‘ordinary’ moments can become a great captures. Family moments, cooking a meal, a light captured in your home, still life, even a selfie! I often find myself looking back at some days which seemed insignificant and I cherries those memories more than anything else. That makes me think that in-home photo sessions are the perfect way to create a photo diary which one day will be great to look at. Even if we photograph a cup of coffee everyday, it’s a different cup of coffee, every time. Do you see what I mean?
So what is your home story about? What is happening in your four walls right now?
3. Plan different activities to photograph
When we are struggling with being creative, it’s a good moment to ask ourselves what it is that we are drawn to. What kind of activities do we enjoy photographing? Right now this is probably more tough but there is always something that brings a little bit more joy than other things. Do we like styling our home and showing it in different ways? Do we like cooking and documenting new recipes, do we like to take self portraits to capture your mood? Understand what it is that you like these days and plan activities around it so that you can photograph it. Below few ideas to get you started.
- Choose your focus: natural light in diffferent ways, still life, styled composition. Finding a theme to focus on will keep you inspired and help you improve your skills.
- 30 day project: making a commitment to a 30 days or 365 days project if you prefer guarantees a plan for each day of the project duration. It’s much easier to follow the plan then come up each day with new ideas. Time-projects can involve for example shooting the same subject (breakfast, light in your home, styled arrangement, your plants, kids or pet playing for 30 days days in a row)
- 30 Day Challenge on Instagram: there are many fun challenges to join on Instagram which help us stay creative. My recent favourite is the #30DayHomeLove – by Holly (Decor8) and Niki (My Scandinavian home). Each day new challenge is posted for us to join, inspire each other and create new images.
- Follow a book or an e-course: Another great way to keep the motivation up is to follow an e-book or an e-course. Now that we have more compulsory time we can use it to learn something new and stay inspired. For example: In my Styling and Photography course I teach how to increase photography and styling skills but also give you 10 project tasks designed to keep the motivation up and implement what you learned. More details here.
4. Start inspiration diary
It can be a real paper notebook with notes and images or a digital one, for example a board on Pinterest where you pin images which inspire you. It’s a great way to visualise our current mood and what we are drawn to, to understand the style we like and what inspires us. Try gathering 10-20 images which currently ‘spark joy’, then look at them and draw conclusion. What is currently inspiring you? Is it specific subject? Color palette? Lighting? Design style?
5. Follow your intuation
Perhaps shooting your home or family is not your thing and that’s ok. Not every photo needs a story, some photos can be just expression of our creativity. artful moment, a fun composition. Create compositions with your favourite colors, objects, patterns and photograph the result.
6. Have a plan
Decide today what your focus will be. I often find myself feeling very inspired in one moment and then if I don’t ‘grab’ that inspiration after few hours…it fades away, does it ever happen to you too? The way to make sure the inspiration stays with us is turning it into a plan of action. Now that we are inspired to let’s say shoot our living room, how are we going to proceed?
for example: PLAN for Living room shoot: First, let’s tidy up, prepare the room (are there any furniture to move around?), style the room (add props : blankets, green twigs, coffee mug on a table), arrange them to create a story, make a little shot list of what you are going to capture (entire room, sideboard objects, coffee on a coffee table, a pile of magazines etc), decide on the light (what time are you going to photograph it?) then once you are ready – shoot and make magic happen!
A plan always works for me so decide how you are going to keep your motivation up for the next weeks, what techniques would you like to try, what would projects you will complete, what you would like to learn?
What are you going to do?
Styling and Photography: Agata Dimmich / PASSIONSHAKE
