Kids room photography - Tips & tricks to take your best photos yet

by Alyce Pham January 29, 2020

Welcome Emily K Creative

If you're looking for the latest tips and tricks on how to create some serious scroll stropping content then look no further than Emily from @emilykcreative.

Emily is an incredible product and interior photographer who is well know for her photography services both within Australia and abroad. With her latest collection of Lightroom Presets (which we can personally vouch for!), Emily is helping take photography to a whole new level.

Here at Hope & Jade we're thrilled to welcome Emily to share with us her tips on how you too can create total Insta worthy photos of your kids rooms and the home.

Be sure to follow Emily on Instagram where she shares her love for pretty things, house plants and her kids funny faces! Instagram - @emilykcreative

Let there be light!

We all know that Instagram is jam packed with incredible pictures of kids rooms and nurseries that look so light, bright and oh so dreamy! But lets face it, unless you live in a total glass house it can seem pretty much impossible to get so much natural light into the home. So many of us struggle with creating these beautiful images with the biggest set back being lighting. Low light in a room is renowned for creating noise, blur and dull colours in your images.

Bright and beautiful! Emily favours a light, airy style of photography.

Preparation is key

If the room you’re photographing is one you intend to use for photos often, there are a few things you can do to make the interior brighter:

Opt for a room with large window(s) that offer direct, natural light. Trees and external awnings can often hinder the amount of natural light let in.
Paint the room primarily white. White reflect light, so having a white or light coloured room will not only make the room look larger, but will spread light around the room.
Furniture - similarly - is better in lighter tones. The goal is to combat low source light with a lighter interior. Think white or natural wood tones for key furniture pieces.

Tools of the trade

If you're happy to invest a little to really get yourself set up for interior photography, then here's a few key pieces you should look at:

A tripod for your camera or phone. Low light requires slower shutter speeds when can create blur. Setting up on a tripod will limit blur and, if you have the knowledge to manually adjust your shutter speed (M on a DSLR and ‘Pro mode’ or something similar on your phone) you’ll be able to lower it right down to bring in more light. Fancy a trip to Office works anyone?
Sheer curtains. Even if the window is small or natural light limited, a sheer curtain is necessary. It will diffuse the light coming through the window and spread it around the room. This helps to lighten shadows and make them less harsh. These can easily be purchased from Kmart, Spotlight or many other department stores at quite affordable prices!
Artificial lighting. If there is not enough natural light to take a good shot of the room, you might consider investing in some artificial lighting. Never use ceiling lights to lighten a room - they will throw too warm or too cool tones as well as shadows because of the light’s positioning. Similarly, avoid using the inbuilt flash on your camera. They are directional and will create harsh shadows while blowing out the exposure in other areas. Instead, opt for an off camera flash (some of these can Bluetooth to your phone) and direct it upwards and towards a white wall so that light bounces and diffuses. Another option is to get a soft box lighting system, which throws bright, even light across the subject.

Image 1 shows window lighting while image 2 shows the softening effects of diffused light (sheer curtains) in an unedited image taken with a phone camera.

Lights, camera, action!

If you own one, I definitely recommend shooting with a DSLR camera on manual mode to get your shot as perfect as possible in camera, but mobile phones will work too.

Top tips:

Choose a time of day when your source of natural light is the brightest. For example, if the window (with sheer curtain) gets direct sunlight in the morning, that’s the best time to shoot.
Shoot the room with your back or side to the window. Shooting directly at the window will often require extra post processing to even out exposure between window and room.

Editing how to

Editing is often the saving grace of a low light shoot. There are many editing tools out there with similar functions but for the purpose of this explanation, I’ll be using Adobe Lightroom, which is free in app form.

To lighten up a room, you only need to change a few settings: Exposure, contrast, highlights and whites.

As you can see in screenshot #1 below, I’ve actually lowered the contrast, highlight and white sliders. This allows me to raise the exposure further without getting clipping (over exposure) in my whites.

You may also need to adjust the white balance (screenshot #2) to correct the colours. You can either use the temp and tint sliders, or the white balance dropper on a grey section of the photo.

Lastly (screenshot #3) if you’re finding there’s some noise in your photo from shooting in low light, you might be able to erase it with the noise reduction slider.

The power of Presets

Another editing option is to use Lightroom Presets. They are similar to applying a filter to a photo, but in Lightroom they are completely customisable so you can use a preset as a base, then make adjustments to exposure or white balance. I have created a collection of Lightroom presets which can be purchased from my online store Emily K Creative. They have been designed to get the best out of interiors and you can see a before and after example of my Wild Light preset below.

Before and after images of a kids interior space using Emily's Wild Light presets

The power of presets! Amazing results using Emily's Wild light preset

THANK YOU Emily

A big thanks to the amazing Emily for sharing these incredible tips with us! For more tips and tricks about photography be sure to visit Emily over at Emily K Creative to check out her blogs or follow along on Instagram @emilykcreative.

Thanks for joining us, and be sure to share with us any topics you would love us to cover in future blogs below.

Alyce x