Photographing Your Everyday: Kitchen Table, Kids, Ordinary Stuff
Okay. New module. This one's called Real-Life Photos and What I Still Fight, and I want to start with the stuff that's actually in front of most of us most days. Not vacations. Not sunsets over the point of the mountain. The kitchen table. The kid doing homework. The dog sleeping wrong. That kind of thing.
Here's the thing. I think people save up all their good photo instincts for the "special" moments and then shoot everything else on autopilot, standing up, five feet back, overhead light on. And then they wonder why their photo library is a thousand blurry, yellow, boring pictures of real life.
I'd rather you have a clean, well-lit photo of your kid eating cereal than a moody artistic shot of nothing. That's not a throwaway line, I mean it. Ordinary stuff, photographed well, is worth more than fancy stuff photographed carelessly. Most of your life is the ordinary stuff. Might as well have it look decent.
Start with the light you already have
Before you touch anything else, look at where the light's coming from. Kitchen table shots go bad fast because we shoot them at dinner, in the dark, with the overhead light on, and overhead light is almost never flattering. It's flat, it's a little yellow or a little green depending on your bulbs, and it makes everyone look tired.
If you can, shoot near a window instead. Morning light at the breakfast table. Late afternoon light if you're doing homework photos. Turn the overhead off, even if it feels wrong, even if the room looks dimmer to your eye. Your phone will usually surprise you with how much it can do with window light once the overhead's not fighting it.
Get low, get close, again
We've spent a few lessons on this already so I won't redo the whole thing. But it applies double at home. Kids are short. If you're standing over them shooting down, you're getting the top of a head and a table. Get down to their level. Get close enough that you can see what they're actually doing with their hands, their face, whatever's interesting.
This is the same principle as the trees, if you want to know the truth.
We were up the canyon on a family hike a while back and I kept stopping to shoot the light coming through the scrub oak. Just kept stopping. My son Easton, who was fifteen and had somewhere to be that was apparently more important than the light through the leaves, told me I was being weird about the trees. I was. I fully was. But I got one shot out of that hike I still like, and it's because I stopped and actually looked instead of walking past it at eye level like everybody else on the trail.
Same thing at your kitchen table. Stop. Get down. Look at what's actually there before you shoot it.
A few practical steps
- Kill the overhead, use the window. If it's dark out, don't force it, just know the photo will look different (grainier, warmer) and that's fine.
- Get to the kid's level or the object's level. Kneel, crouch, whatever it takes.
- Tap to focus on the actual subject, not the table, not the wall behind them. Tap on the face, tap on the hands doing the thing.
- Take the second photo. Kids move, dogs move, cereal gets eaten. The first shot is almost never the one. Shoot two or three without stopping to check.
- Watch the background. A messy counter or an open cupboard behind your kid will pull the eye just as much as the kid does. You don't need to clean the kitchen, just notice what's in frame and shift a foot if you need to.
A caution, mildly
If you're getting low around a toddler or a dog, watch your footing. I say this because I've nearly gone down more than once, crouched in a kitchen with hard tile floors, trying to get an angle, and that's a bad way to end a nice afternoon. Nothing dramatic, just, know where your knees and elbows are before you commit to the shot.
What I'd skip
I wouldn't bother with portrait mode for this kind of photo. It blurs the background in a way that can look fake, especially indoors where the phone's already guessing at depth in a small space. Just get close enough that the background naturally falls away a little, and use the grid to keep your subject roughly where your eye wants to rest. It's not fancy. It works better than the filter, most of the time.
Before next time
Take five photos of something ordinary at your house this week, dinner, homework, the dog on the couch, whatever's actually happening. No posing. Get low, get close, use whatever window light you've got, and bring your favorite one to share. 🎉