Take pictures, ignore the mess

Take pictures, ignore the mess

Messy Background image

        I’ve been overwhelmed. I’ve been surrounded by clutter. I’ve had mountains of boxes to unpack and even larger mountains of “stuff” to find a new spot for in this house that I barely feel like we can call our own.

 And then it hit me: “At what point will I feel comfortable taking pictures again?!”

         And I realized my deep down scared-to-admit-it answer is: “When everything is put away and the house is ‘set up.’”

         Seriously?! I’m not taking pictures of this huge transition in my family’s life because there’s clutter in the background?! I’ve been ignoring every ounce of photography advice I’ve ever given on this blog.

         So yesterday I did what I should have been doing all along. I picked up my camera and I ignored the mess.

         Painting supplies, a spackle container, piles of cleaning rags, random kitchen clutter, and just general chaos. All of that is still there in the original images but because of creative cropping and standing at a different spot in the kitchen when shooting I was able to focus on what really matters: those little sweeties helping Mommy.

Now why would I want to miss out on that “until the house is clean”?

         Is visual clutter preventing you from capturing the moment? Here are my 5 tricks on avoiding the chaos:

1. Move in close to your subject:
          The less environment you have in the background, the less room you have for junk to creep in.

2. Try a different angle:
          If you’re as close as you can get and you still have clutter in your background, try stepping 1 or 2 steps to either side and shoot again. Or try shooting from the opposite side of the room.

3. Selectively edit the items in the frame:
            That first shot of the girls at the sink taken from the back originally had a big red paint bucket lid on the counter next to them. No matter which angle I was shooting at, it was still there. So I grabbed it and tossed it farther away on the counter and out of the scene before my next shot.

4. Crop even closer in post-processing:
          Missed something during your session? Try cropping in a photo editor after the fact. I removed an obnoxious power outlet in one of the pictures just by cropping the photo in a little tighter on the girls.

5. Embrace life as it is:
          If all your best attempts at removing the clutter from your photo fails, embrace the fact that this is the stage of life your house is in. Don’t be shy about capturing your family just because there may be some toys or kitchen mess in the background. In the years to come you just might become nostalgic about your crazy busy life when you look through your photo albums from the comfort of your sparkling clean living room.