Test Shoot: Master Bedroom

Playing photographer for a day

This past weekend I tried my hand at photographing a few rooms in our house.  My patient husband must have tried to explain the difference between ISO, aperture and shutter speed to me at least a dozen times.  For some reason, it goes completely over my head!  (Um, I even had to ask him again so that I could get them right for this post!)  But beyond the technical difficulties, it was interesting to experiment with different angles and prop styling, and why some shots were successful while others were not.  I wanted to show you what I mean in these example shots.  I mainly used three lenses: a wide angle, a macro, and a lens which I later learned was actually a telephoto lens (oops!). 

For this main shot, I used a wide angle lens, which distorted the image so that everything against the wall appears a lot smaller than it does in person.  But it was the only way to get the entire wall.  I took some vertical shots too, but they seemed to exaggerate the fisheye effect even more.

Here I wanted to get a detail shot of the top of the nightstand.  I used a macro lens for this one, but really had to play with where the focus was since the depth of field is short (it creates that blurred background).  Although I decided to focus on the Missoni necklace and Chanel label, I’m happy that the detail of the vintage copper pressed plate really came through:

I played around with these shots of the dresser a lot.  I was literally sitting all the way back against the headboard just to get this!  It was tricky to get the right angle, frame the shot, and style the props so it didn’t appear too busy or too empty.  The second shot below is simply at a different angle, yet you can see how it appears quite busy.

Here I wanted to get some detail shots of the perfume tray.  I found that more of a straight-on view seemed to work best, as opposed to the second shot that is at an angle.  You can also see that in the first shot, I moved the tray to sit in front of the jewelry box rather than the framed print, so that there is more texture behind it.

Lastly, I just had to include this shot so you could see all the props I bought at Home Goods prior to the shoot!  I played around with them a ton for the pictures (like, obsessively).  When you look at magazine photos, you’ll notice that there is so much “stuff” in them, no one would really live like that (or at least my minimalist husband and my busy daugther would never let me)!  So no surprise that in real life, I only kept a few pieces.

There were probably a hundred shots in all of just this one room, and I must have been at it for 4-6 hours when you include Photoshop time!  But it was a lot of fun and I learned a ton.  Hope you did too.

Much props to those prop stylists and photogs out there that do this for a living!

…xoxo

p.s. you can see some of my other “experiments” in my dining room post, and the post about my lamps.