Photographing The Home

Do you need to take a photography or computer class to learn the art of taking good photographs of your home? Yes it is most definitely an art form and one I am quickly discovering I don't posess. If the old saying practice makes perfect is true, then I hope to be a pro at it by the end of 2009. Perhaps updating my out of date camera will help? I can't guarantee it! I have just read a very discriptive help guide on how to take good photos of your home. I have many of them down. The easy ones that have nothing to do with my eye looking through the lens and making art out of a room. De cluttering your space. Not crowding pieces in the room. No harsh overhead lights. Making sure the space is clean. Yes these are all things I can do and in fact have. But the list continued and this may have been where they lost me completely. Don't take a picture of an item straight on. For example if you are taking a picture of your sofa don't just stand in front of it and snap the shot. HUH? Well I ask myself how else would I take a picture of my sofa? Or how about this one? Make a shot interesting by including an unexpected element in it like half of a doorway. Hmmm may have to think hard on that one. Or this one. Take the shots from as many possible angles as available to you. Above the room looking down, on the floor of the room, standing in several different areas to get the same picture. Taking photos of the room at several different times of the day to see what light makes the room look its best. Adding and subracting items in the room just for the purpose of taking the photo. I think that is called staging. So I am contemplating them all and hoping that perhaps I will find a camera that will do all this for me. If not you may find me hanging off my kitchen chandelier at 7:04 AM exactly, because of course I have found that the family room light is superb at this time, and I need to get the shot from an above the room angle at approximately 11 paces south by south west. Yelling to my kids that they need to get ready for school on their own because this light only lasts for a few minutes. Praying I don't actually fall off the chandelier because my table is covered with all the clutter in the room that I had to remove to make the shot all that it could be. Cursing at my new camera because it is still forcing me to work for the shot. By the way I seriously doubt that dinner will be cooked this week either because afterall I need to sit and take pictures every minute of the day to insure my lighting is perfectly correct! I am exhausted and I have not even gotten started. Seriously though this may be a goal for me to accomplish in the New Year. Kudos to all you fabulous artists out there whose blogs I visit and think "look at this breathtaking photo". How on earth do you do it? I bow to you. In the mean time please don't judge MY photos.

~KD