With all the extra time on our hands at the moment, it’s the perfect opportunity to try a new hobby. We thought, why not awaken your inner shutterbug and master the art of indoor photography. This genre of photography is trending big right now and it has a lot to offer in terms of variations and skills. To get you started, and excited, we’ll take you through a few different aspects of indoor photography that you can practise at home right away.
Go ahead… show off that perfect shot! Just remember, a good picture doesn’t need a fancy camera – it needs the right eye.
1. Indoor Portrait – sharing stories through expressions
Probably the most expressive genre of photography, indoor portraits can range between individual portraits to high fashion clicks. However, if you are just starting out, focus on telling a story through your picture. Set a clean frame and make sure you balance the light perfectly to bring the right mood!
A few technical tips to get you started:
- If you are going to click your portrait in natural light, pick the golden hour (one hour after sunrise/ one hour before sunset).
- Use the “tap to focus” feature on your smartphone to make sure that you have a sharp silhouette of the subject to avoid blurry lines.
- For a smoother shot, you can select the manual mode on your phone’s camera app and stick to lower ISO numbers (ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light) or use the portrait mode get the perfect bokeh (which is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens).
- Don’t shy away from experimenting with colour tones by setting a contrasting background for your subject or adding filters to your snapshot.
2. Indoor Interior – spaces worth reliving
Some interiors resonate a mood that is worth reliving time and again. Whether it is the quaintness of a study room or the liveliness of a drawing room, these spaces become a representation of your personal aesthetic. The secret to a good indoor interior picture lies in capturing the mood of the place and emphasising on the geometrical brilliance that the indoor-scape has to offer.
A few technical tips to get you started:
- Make sure that your picture of the indoor setting captures the mood it represents. For example, a drawing room normally conveys a feeling of belonging while the interiors of a bedroom express the comfort of personal space.
- Staying true to the colour tone of the indoor space is very important, and don’t forget to explore more than one angle. Different angles can add a perspective of depth or height that makes the picture more memorable.
- Create a more impactful background by embracing negative space (which is the empty space around your subject) in your photos.
3. Indoor Garden Photography – expressing nature’s beauty indoors
Your perfect subject is just around the corner! House plants and flower vases make for a great subject when it comes to indoor photography. They are colourful, adjustable to frame and inherently expressive.
A few technical tips to get you started:
- The secret is clean decluttered frames. So make sure you run an eye around the subject before capturing it. Since light can be a challenge, clicking houseplants closer to a window against a dark background gives plenty of illumination and reduces unwanted shadows.
- Pick a plant with some colour, because that definitely brings out more character and texture in the image!
4. Indoor Food and Beverage Photography – delicious food made to look even more delicious
Instagram and social media challenges have us clicking food and beverage pictures like never before. If you too are fascinated with these subjects, then focus on colour, texture, and background to make your regular Dalgona coffee look like it was made in a South Korean Café!
A few technical tips to get you started:
- When it comes to clicking food and beverages, professional photographers swear by the Rule of Thirds. The idea is to divide every frame into 9 equal grids and keep your subject along the lines or at the intersection! Smartphone users can follow this technique with ease by turning on “gridlines” from the settings of their camera app. Maintaining this rule invariably draws more attention to the subject because that is how we are programmed to measure aesthetic appeal.
- Also, there is no stressing enough on the value of natural light and the use of a good backdrop. It could be good looking cutlery, table design or the balcony background in some cases. The idea is to get creative and find your perfect frame!
5. Indoor Macro Photography – experience the power of detail
Have you ever been fascinated by the picture of an everyday item because of the detail it produces in a magnified image? That’s the beauty of macro photography! The brilliance of macro lies in the texture and detail that it exposes in everyday things.
A few technical tips to get you started:
- Most modern-day smartphones come with a macro mode in their camera which you can experiment with.
- If your phone does not have the option, then using a magnifying glass in front of your lens can also help you reach the same effect. Avoid zooming in and clicking the picture because even the slightest shake can ruin your frame completely.
- Another way to get better macro shots with your phone camera is to invest in an inexpensive clip-on lens that can give you close to a 10x zoom.
This is our selection of five types of indoor photography styles that you can try at home right now and up your skills. So get clicking.
