TIPS & TRICKS FOR YOUR LIFESTYLE PHOTOS

Oct 28

Laughing and brunch dates for the win, amiright? I love to laugh and I love spending time with people who laugh and make me laugh. These friends make me laugh and I love everything about that. Two things happen to us as photographers.... we either take our camera everywhere we go... or we leave it at home. If I'm not careful I leave my camera at home (I'm currently telling myself it's because we're homebodies, haha.)

In an effort to take more lifestyle photos and continue to challenge myself as a photographer I wanted to come up with some tips and tricks for taking more and better lifestyle photos.

MAKE A PLAN

When I was with the girls I knew we would be taking photos every where we went, that's the perk of hanging out with other photographers. :) We planned to go to brunch and it was second nature to be toting my camera around. I had made a mental plan that I would take photos, that I would capture our moments together, and hopefully snap some style photos while we were at it. I made a plan. This is a huge tip for me, because most of the time I'm hanging out with non-photographers/bloggers. I get a little insecure when I pull out my camera and start snapping photos of everyone and their mom. Luckily, my closest friends are used to it, ha! Now that I'm home it's important for me to make that mental plan. I have to decided ahead of time I'm going to take lifestyle photos while I'm out and take pictures of everyone and their mom. ;)

KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR LIGHT AND SURROUNDINGS

I feel like I harp on light at lot, but hey, it's important, right? Light is crucial in our photos, but with lifestyle photos, because we're working to capture moments that naturally unfold, we can't always move our subjects. BUT, we can move ourselves or adjust our surroundings to create better light or a better atmosphere. During our brunch date we ate outside, which was great because it was beautiful and sunny. The light however, was harsh and direct. We ended up opening the umbrella over our table. This was great for two reasons; we didn't have light streaming into our eyes, and we had more even light to snap photos in.

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS

Details are some of my favorite moments to capture. They tell a great part of your story and most of the time they are easy to capture. Details can be more then objects... they can be hands, accessories, moments, and everything else in between.

BE DISCRETE

Do you want to know a secret? One of my least favorite things is drawing attention to myself when I take photos. I wish I could be invisible and just snap away. If I'm hanging out with people who aren't in front of the camera often, I try my best to be discrete. I try to capture them when they aren't looking. I snap a few detail shots around them before actually pointing the camera at them. This allows them to get a little more comfortable in front of the camera and hopefully they relax.

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Every day is a new day to grow, learn, and experiment with our photography. Have you ever heard the quote, "We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better." I feel the same way about photographing. The more photos we take the better we get. What are some of your favorite lifestyle photos tips? xoxo. Samantha