Indoor Photography

Indoor shots present special challenges in terms of lighting, and shot composition.

Lighting

Indoor shots can be taken with natural lighting, artificial lighting, or a combination of the two. You might want to try shooting at several different times of the day with natural light because it enters the interior at different angles and intensities depending on the time of the day. For example, when the sun is low in the horizon, it can create long shadows.

The best indoor photos are often those that are taken with natural light. If you have a camera capable of low noise at high ISO settings, even dim light is sufficient. Situations where you might need to use artificial light include when you have no control over the lighting, as in a museum or other public building, or when the is very little or no natural light available.  Artificial lighting can also be used to intentionally create shadows to make a shot more interesting, or to shine additional light on a subject to highlight it.

Using artificial lighting can however be challenging. Interiors often contain many reflective surfaces; windows or anything made of glass, glossy furniture of fixtures, or even light colored paint or wallpaper. These reflective surfaces can cause unwanted glare and reflection in photos. This problem is exacerbated by use of a flash. Flash use can also cause a phenomenon called "red eye" in which the eyes of human subjects glow bright red (this has something to do with the blood vessels in the retina of the eye). Another problem with artificial light is that it may not appear white. Different sources of artificial light emit different wavelengths of light that can cause hues, shades, and unnatural colors in the photo. It is sometimes necessary to use one of the methods of white balance correction to compensate for this.

Shot Composition

Highlights and shadows are abundant in interiors due to lighting, and the layout of the interior. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage. The art of interior photography is using these two factors as tools to produce an interesting, pleasing shot composition. The most common type of indoor shot is one where the subject is a person or group of people. For this type of shot, you may wish to use a narrow depth of field to produce a blurry or fuzzy background (more on this in the section Photographing People). It may be necessary to direct a light source onto the faces of the people for emphasis.

As with any type of photo, a shot of the interior of a room needs some main center of interest or subject, be it a painting, a piece of furniture, an archway, or whatever. The trick then is to emphasize this center of interest by skillfully managing the lighting and camera angle. Always be looking for opportunities to "frame" your subject. Indoor scenes offer many such opportunities. The easiest way to emphasize the subject is to have it fill most of the photo by getting closer to it or zooming in.

A couple of tips: Get rid of distracting clutter such as pens, scraps of paper, ashtrays, clothes or other unsightly objects from tabletops, desks, and counters. Be careful about pointing your camera at an upward or downward and when shooting objects or backgrounds with vertical lines, because this can cause them to be crooked. Try to shoot things with straight lines and angles with the camera pointing perpendicular to them.

Sometimes you will want to take more of a panoramic shot of a room, as might be the case inside a large public bulding. In order to capture a wide expanse at a relatively close distance, you will need a lens with a short focal length or a wide  angle lens.

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