BEHIND THE SHOT
Photography at Home
Take a closer look at the rooms in your home that you frequent every day, and you may discover subtle details that you hadn’t noticed before.
For instance, the light that pours through your bedroom window in the morning, creating interesting shadows that bounce off your bookshelf. Or the way colours adapt as the daylight recedes and you start turning on lamps in preparation for the evening.
With a little imagination, the sights you see every day at home offer bountiful opportunities for beautiful photos. Try these tips and see what you come up with.
Find Your Subject
First, look for something in your home that you’d like to photograph, such as a vase of flowers or a piece of furniture you love.
One of the key things to consider is how you can make use of natural light. Explore the scene from all angles to find the ideal position to take your photos. Maybe the shot will work best as you look down from above or upwards from a lower angle.
Photographing at home means you can get as creative as you like, especially with seemingly mundane everyday objects. For example, placed in the sunlight, a glass can form fantastic shadows. Try placing one on a windowsill and experiment with the position to get different effects. And it could be interesting to create shadows yourself, using your hands or another object.
Photograph Your Scene
Once you’ve arranged your scene, it’s time to photograph it. Use the manual camera app Halide for its detailed settings for shutter speed, exposure, focus, and more.
It also enables you to capture RAW images—including unprocessed data exactly as it’s recorded by the camera’s sensor—so after taking a photo, you can edit your images with a high degree of freedom.
First, adjust the exposure to match the amount of light. In Halide, by swiping the screen up and down you can easily adjust the exposure depending on the brightness of the room you’re photographing in.
Try Halide’s Focus Peaking feature to capture your subject clearly. It will highlight areas that are focused on and emphasize them with the colour green on the screen.
To do this, tap the button to the left of the sliding bar at the bottom of the screen to adjust the focus. While moving the sliding bar left and right, as the focus changes, the area highlighted in green will also adjust.
If you want to set your subject in a certain way, use Halide’s grid overlay on the settings screen. If your device isn’t level, the central square will rotate to match the angle. Adjust the position until it becomes horizontal, and the border colour changes from white to yellow.
When photographing from directly above, two small circles will appear in the centre square. Move your device until the two circles overlap and become horizontal, and you’ll be able to achieve a balanced photo from any angle.
Edit to Your Liking
Now that you have your photos, it’s time to edit. Take the image of the chair below as an example—by lowering the highlights and raising the shadows a little, it’s brought out the granular details in the photo for a more vivid contrast.
Achieve similar effects with Darkroom, which lets you tweak the colour and brightness of your photos.
Now take a look at the image below where a petal is placed in the centre of the frame. The striking shadow pattern is enhanced by underexposure to contrast with the brighter areas.
If you shoot a RAW image, Darkroom lets you adjust the exposure during the editing stage to achieve this enhanced shadow effect in your photo.
The light and shadows in your home are changing constantly throughout the day, so pick a subject, explore new angles, and look for a fresh take on the rooms you think you know entirely—because there’s always something new to see.