Learning The Art of Interior Photography

Interior design photography is an art and I've taken on the challenge to master this art through a self-guided crash course.

I’m not 100% new here - I used to photograph interiors for my bestie Leslie of The Inspiration Nest as well as a handful of other talented designers . . .

and I did a pretty good job.

BUT I did NOT know there were ‘rules!’

Take this living room image for example:

Living room design by The Inspiration Nest - photographed by moi back in 2018.

You see, I’m a former wedding and portrait photographer and I was tackling interiors the same way. Light and bright and super shallow! A ‘shallow depth of field’ is when only a small area of the image is in focus - beautiful for portraits when you want the background to be blurry! But not so great when you’re trying to showcase the design work of a beautifully designed and styled interior.

Don’t get me wrong - these images were pretty - they just weren't technically correct.

Learning new techniques for capturing interiors is something I’m working on now!

Here are some examples of photographs I took of projects a few years ago for The Inspiration Nest. I still think these images are beautiful of course, but now that I’m learning more about interior photography - they’re just not quite right.

Don’t get me wrong - these are all lovely well designed spaces!

But the images I captured are too shallow (not enough in focus), the lighting isn’t quite right (interior lights are turned on and casting undesirable colours and shadows) and there are areas that are completely blown out (windows mostly where there is no information captured at all because too much light was being let into the camera).

Leslie was(is) not only my bestie but she was also a great client of Mango Reclaimed - we reclaimed many furniture projects for her clients over the past decade. So it was a win/win when I would be invited to photograph her interior design spaces and also have a chance to photograph our reclaimed furniture pieces in their new beautiful homes!

Take a quick trip down memory lane with me will you?

Did you know we reclaimed over 4,000 pieces of furniture during the last decade at Mango Reclaimed? Just think of how many pieces of furniture we saved from landfill and are still being used and loved today . . . .

Sorry, definitely getting sidetracked here!

What I’m getting around to is that I’m learning!

Interior design photography is more about proper perspectives and a meaningful representation of the design elements as a whole - not just creating a beautiful image that is focused on one element at a time.

Take these two images for example -

both are from the beautiful home of Niki Alane Interiors (my very talented sister in law). And there will definitely be more to come on the beautifully designed home of Niki in future blog posts!

The first image I took when I was still shooting all light and bright and shallow with interior lights turned on.

The second image is once I started to learn some of the ‘rules’ of interior design photography.

You can see that the colour casts are different too! This is because I used to have all the lights on when photographing interiors . . . .which I’ve also learned is generally a big no-no (unless you're capturing images for real estate which has different ‘rules’ as well, good grief, lol). Interior design photographs almost always has all of the interior lighting turned off - unless the lighting is being featured or used to help create a desired mood.

Here are some more examples of pictures where I had the lights on - before I learned that this was a no-no.

Anyways all this to say that the learning continues! Including an incredible online course I’m going through right now about lighting for Interior Design photography. Currently I’ve been shooting with ambient light (the natural light that currently exists in a space).

Looking forward to taking this up a few notches again! Always learning!

Interior design photography is made up of a few key elements:: it starts with a great composition, it needs to have straight lines (true perspectives), be in focus throughout and have lighting that accentuates the textures and details of design that make up the space.

I like to think that the viewer should be able to imagine themselves walking right into the space and making themselves at home!

Stay tuned for more ramblings, photographic epiphanies and quasi interesting things I’m learning, lol!

xo

~Mango

BTS - Leslie and i probably have about 5,000 pictures just like this one, lol!

BTS

One of many fun networking events that Leslie and I attended while building our businesses side by side.