October Feature: SNAP! by Becca Robinson

Hey Everyone! Today, I'm going to share a post from my sister-in-law, Becca. She is an amazing photographer, my newest sponsor and has some great tips and tricks to photography to share with you today... but I'll let her tell you all about it. Take it away, Becca!

I am a professional photographer (and mom of three young kiddos) from the Raleigh, NC area (see my website at www.raleighfamilyphotography.com).  Many of my clients ask me for advice on how to take better pictures of their kids, so I wrote an e-book to answer all those questions they have.  The book is to help you learn simple and straightforward techniques for taking beautiful portraits of your young children.  It is written for moms (and dads) who don't have the time to learn all the complicated technical aspects of photography. Learn how to easily capture your child's natural expressions, and how to find the right light to photograph them in, indoors and out. Learn how to inexpensively assemble an indoor setup to take studio-like pictures in your own home. Figure out how to determine the ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed when using the manual setting on your camera. And then the book will show you some posing ideas for each age group (newborn thru age 10), and some simple editing and printing tips for what to do after you get a great picture. Covering everything from start to finish, this is the one book you will need (whether you have an expensive DSLR, a simple point-and-shoot camera, or even your camera phone) to help you take better pictures of your children.

Today I wanted to write a post about how I take professional looking pictures indoors. I do most of my indoor sessions in my client’s homes. So you don’t need a studio to take good pictures indoors.  I made myself what I call a “mobile studio” that I can bring anywhere or set up in my own home quickly and easily.  You can be as intricate in your indoor setups as you’d like.  If you want something quick and easy just set up a chair in front of a neutral colored wall.  But if you want something more elaborate you can make your own backdrops and floorings.  They are not even hard to make!

How to make your own indoor studio

Flooring:  Do you have pretty hardwood floors that don’t produce much glare?  Then you may be able to skip this step.  But for the rest of us we can make some fake ones!  Take a trip to your local hardware store and buy a piece of plywood; the size depends on what you want to do with it.  I have three kids and my piece is 4x4 feet.  If you will be photographing just one child you can get away with a smaller piece.  Then go to the laminate flooring section and pick up a carton of laminate “fake hardwood” flooring.  Make sure it doesn’t give off too much glare. Some of the laminate floorings seem to be shinier than others – go for the less shiny.  I personally like the darker wood colors but feel free to choose whatever color wood you like. Then go home and secure the laminate flooring to your piece of plywood and you have a flooring drop for portraits!

Backdrops:There are lots of options for backdrops.  Seamless paper and fabric are probably the most common for DIYers (Do It Yourself-ers).  You can purchase Seamless paper at your local camera shop or through Amazon.com.  Go with the 53” wide rolls – the smaller rolls will be too small and the bigger ones are pretty unwieldy and not needed unless you’ll be photographing a large group of people.  These rolls are a great value and last a long time. 

Some of the colors of seamless paper are easier to work with.  Avoid the white – it is tough to work with unless you have a professional lighting system.  The super bright colors can cause a color cast onto your subject (and I doubt you want your child to look like they have a pink face).  However, greys and tans work wonderfully and don’t cause much color cast onto your subject at all.  You can attach the backdrops right onto your wall with painter’s tape (make sure it won’t harm the paint job on your wall!) or command strips.  Then when you are done taking pictures just roll the paper back up and store it in a closet till your next picture taking opportunity.

Molding strip: Just lining up the backdrop with your piece of flooring isn’t going to look right.  To make it look like an actual wall and floor you’ll need to pick up a molding strip.  You can get a pretty basic and cheap white molding strip at your local hardware store and use that to cover the end of the backdrop where it meets the flooring piece.  You can just balance the molding strip against the backdrop, or you can attach the molding to the backdrop with utility clips.

I arranged the indoor setup here right in our tiny entry way to show that you don’t need a lot of free space to set up a little indoor studio.  Once you have the materials, setting them up takes only minutes!  The plywood and laminate flooring piece seen here is something I have used for years and it is still working great.  I just slide it into the back of our closet when I’m not using it.

And a quick snap taken of my four year old on that setup a few minutes later:

For more information, or to buy my e-book on Amazon go, click here.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: 

Follow Up Questions that have been asked:

If you don’t have a kindle, could you still purchase the E-book?

Yes, There is a free kindle app that you can get on your phone, ipad or computer that will allow you to read kindle books on your phone/ipad/computer. I used to read kindle books on my laptop before I got my ipad and it works really well.

What do you do for lighting if you don’t have a lot of natural light?

There are a couple things that you can do if they don't get a lot of light indoors.
(1) In the book I go into a couple things you can do with your onboard flash on your camera to get a more natural look using a flash (if you don't have enough natural light). For instance you can use an folded index card to try and direct the light from the flash to "bounce" off the index card instead of going directly into the subject's eyes. It's a little hard to explain without using the pictures from the book though!
(2) If you have a DSLR you can invest in a Speedlight - an external flash for your DSLR. There are some basic ones for as low as $100. I got a fancy one used for only $200. Then you can bounce the flash off the ceiling so you avoid the hard "flash photography" look while still producing enough light to have a well-lit image.
(3) Or I would suggest moving the set up right next to a window on the time of day when that window gets the most amount of light shining through it. Even if it is a small window that doesn't get a whole lot of light you should get enough light if you position the set up right next to the window.
(4) Once you've moved your setup as close to a window as possible - If you are using your camera in the manual setting set your ISO a bit higher. When I am in a client's home and they don't have a lot of natural light I up my ISO to 800 and that compensates for the lack of light.