Hi, thanks for tuning in. I'm Helen. I'm a Canon ambassador and
I'm a family photographer based in London in the UK. I specialize in black and white
pictures of babies, children and families, all taken on location at my client's
homes or places they like to go to, such as the park or the woods.
Because we're all spending so much time at home at the moment,
we thought it'd be nice to share some tips with you about photographing your
family indoors, some ideas you can use to improve your photography and to document
these extraordinary times. Often when we're photographing our families,
our first instinct is to head outdoors. It's much easier to photograph the children
when they're running around and playing games in the open space where we've got
lots of opportunities to move around and we've got loads of light to play with.
It can seem quite daunting the idea of taking pictures indoors but actually
this means we often leave a lot of opportunities untapped. Photographing in
our homes can be absolutely wonderful. The kids spend so much time at home, so
many of their real memories will be there; their bedrooms, the toys
they play with, and it's nice to be able to document these things, these everyday
things. It will be a really wonderful gift to give to your children. But how do
we start. If we haven't photographed indoors, it can seem quite
overwhelming, so what I recommend is that we start with light. It's always the key
with photography, and the best way to do that with your home is to start to look
at the light. You have to look at the natural light. All the pictures I'm going
to be showing today are taken with natural window light. Some of them are
taken in big houses with a lot of space but others in really very small London flats.
The principles remain the same, whatever your environment, and so I'm
hoping that you'll see these ideas and realize how you can adapt them to your
own situation. When I first go into a house, I always look for the windows.
Look to see where the light is coming in and how it's falling in your own home.
You have the opportunity to see how the light changes over the course of the day,
and it's quite an interesting little project to look at the way the light
changes from different windows in different parts of your house. You might
find that there's one that lets in beautiful shafts of
sunlight in the morning or another way you get sort of shadows on the floor in
the afternoon light. You can document these with your camera, take pictures of
the shadows. It's a great little exercise, and it starts to make you look more
deeply. Think of it more about the light, and the more you start to notice it, the
more that will improve your photography both when your photograph and your
family indoors but also you know when you're out and about and doing other genres.
So once we've had a look at the window light, then we can start to
figure out what kind of pictures are we going to take. When I'm photographing
families indoors, one of the first places I'll start with is a head and
shoulders window lit portrait. These are a really nice thing to have and if your
children are in a cooperative mood, which you know we all know they aren't always,
but if they are they can be a really good way to start and you can get some
fantastic results very quickly. What I would do in this situation, is that I
would stand or sit, often I'd sit because I like to be the same height as my
subjects, but I would sit in front of the window with my back to the window and
then have the child facing towards me and so facing towards the
window light. It's important you don't have direct sunlight coming in through
the window because obviously that would be very harsh on your child's eyes and
they would squint a lot, but if you've got soft light, this can work
really well. Then I'll chat to the kids, talk to them, what are they
interested in, what are they reading, what have they watched on TV, you know, even what
do they want for lunch? Just anything to have a conversation going, because it
doesn't matter what you're talking about. You could be discussing dinosaurs,
quantum physics, Peppa Pig, it really doesn't matter, as long as you've got the
kids engaging, as long as they're interested in what you have to say and
then they forget to do those terrible cheesy grins and instead you get really
beautiful inquisitive natural expressions. So with this picture here
I'm photographing a baby. She's looking up towards the window and if we actually
look close, so we can look at her eyes and we can see the reflection, so you can
see how the light is, we can see the window there and you can see my shadow
and also her mum, who's amazing, holding up her hand, attracting the baby's
attention. This can be really good if you're photographing little ones.
An extra pair of hands to attract attention is fantastic because otherwise
the little ones are like: 'I could look at you for a second, but actually my
toes are really exciting' and you suddenly find that they're just nibbling
on their feet, so having an extra pair of hands can be really helpful. So that's a
picture where we've got the light behind us. We're photographing the child looking
towards the window but then we can change things up a bit.
So this next picture I've moved around. I've gone round the other side of the
child and I'm photographing towards the window. Now it's the same baby, they
haven't moved at all. They're sitting in one of those Bombo chairs, so they're
completely stationary but we can see how different the light is, how it changes
the modelling and how we get this other very beautiful portrait. So that's two
very different ways of photographing in exactly the same situation. I haven't
even changed my settings, it's f 2.8 at a five-hundredths of a second at ISO 1000,
two very different results. But from this, we can then investigate
further, we can change things up a bit. This next picture is obviously an older
child but it's a similar concept again. I'm photographing towards the window.
Here I've used the curtains as a frame with the window and then we've got the
little girl playing her flute. I've dialled my exposure down, so I get this
silhouette and I love the way that the light falls across the
music and across her fingers on the keys. It's a very sort of magical, mystical,
mysterious picture and I really really love it. So try these different things.
Try facing towards the window, try shooting with your back to the window,
try these different approaches and see what different effects it has in your pictures.
You can experiment with your exposure, you can try overexposing
pictures if you're facing towards the window, which will bring up the skin
tones or you can dial it right down and get a silhouette. The more you play, the
more you'll get to grips with how this all works and it will really improve
your photography. So once we've got our head around photographing using a single
window, then we can start to get a bit more creative. We can try some different
ideas. We can move on from a simple portrait. I like to take pictures that
include people's homes. Obviously, it's lovely if you've got
a plain wall to set your child up and take a kind of studio type portrait. A lovely
clean portrait is a wonderful thing to have but I love to include the things
that make your house a home. I think we can all think back to our childhood and
we'll remember the sofa that we used to sit on to watch TV or bits of furniture,
pictures on the wall, all those things that make our house a home. It's nice to
include those in your pictures, perhaps choose an ornament or something you've
got on the wall and use that as a device within your composition. Perhaps
use a reflection in a mirror or shoot through something to create a frame
within a frame. Utilize the things in your house. It's a fantastic way to
create more interesting images. Photographing the kids bedrooms, as well.
Don't worry about the mess but think about the things that they've got there.
The posters on the walls, the toys that have pride of place, all these things will
be so infused with memories that when they look back on them in the future
they'll be incredibly special. I like to photograph children playing with their
favorite toys doing their favorite hobbies. I love to see them engaged in
activities, and obviously when you're photographing them, that's really good
for you too because they'll be distracted, they'll be playing
with their Lego and that gives you the opportunity to move around, try different
angles, try different approaches to your pictures. Photograph them from doing their
favorite hobbies. Wouldn't it be amazing if those were the things that they did
as a career when they grow up. I have pictures my dad took of me playing
with a camera when I'm sort of five and six years old, and they're amazing to
have now. I love to look at this picture of this little girl practising her
gymnastics and think 'will she be a famous gymnast'? I mean, she
definitely wants to be a famous gymnast but if she is, wouldn't it be amazing for
her to look back on this picture from when she's five years old and just
beginning to hone her skills? When you're taking pictures indoors, then fast lenses
do make a difference, and by fast I mean lenses which have the opportunity for a
wide aperture such as F1.8. This gives you a lot more flexibility than lenses
where you can only get to F4 or F5.6 because light is limited
indoors, particularly if we're just using window light. And kids, as we all know, they
still move around really fast, whatever we're doing. Now, this doesn't mean you
have to go out and spend a fortune. Canon actually makes a fantastic lens, EF 50mm
1.8 lens, the nifty 50, as it's known in the trade, and this is a fantastic
inexpensive lens to start with. It gives you the flexibility of shooting at F1.8,
so you can shoot indoors and it's a great way to learn. It's also an amazing
way to get your head around the aperture, if this is something that's quite new to you.
Because you can really see the difference, you can shoot at F1.8, you can
shoot at F16, you can really see how those changes come through. It's a lens I
recommend to all my friends, to all my clients, that anyone that wants to learn
more about photography, as it's such a good way to start. So I hope that's been
useful. I mean, the other really key thing to this is to have fun.
Photograph your kids having fun. Have fun yourself. Photography is an amazing hobby
and no matter what level our skill is, the resulting pictures will have such
worth for your children when they grow up. It's an incredible gift that you're
giving them. Have fun with it. If the kids really aren't in the mood, then
return to it another day. That's no problem. And never forget that a
chocolate biscuit makes every photo shoot go so much better. I hope you enjoy.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. I'm at Helen
Bartlett photography on Instagram, send me a question, anything and I'll
obviously do my very best to answer you. I'm really looking forward to
seeing how your pictures turn out he more you experiment and go forward on
this photographic journey. So do keep in touch and we can go forward and learn
more together. Thanks very much for tuning in, see you again.