How to work around the clutter to get great photos

You see a great moment happening in some really awesome light but then you decide against getting out your camera because the house is just too messy.

It’s discouraging to say the least.

I am guilty of this. Realistically, the moments that you want to document don’t always happen in great locations, perfect light and awesomely clean backgrounds. So what are you suppose to do? I have a few pullbacks and some tricks on how I used those cluttered rooms to take some not so cluttered images.

1. Take a “safe” photo then move what you can.

This was my safe image! This little one always tries to steal the last few drops of my tea out of the many mugs I leave laying around the house (she actually drinks the last few drops then takes the mug to the dishwasher).

Once I had this shot, I carefully moved the toys onto the floor. When I do this, I find it is best to approach the situation similar to how you would a wild animal in their natural habitat. If you move too quickly, or if the toddler knows you are trying to get a better picture, they will be sure to attack. By “attack”, I mean sabotage your efforts and refuse to cooperate in any attempts to create an image that might fit into your artistic vision.

Once I carefully put all of the other toys on the floor, she took her horse and gave him a drink.

I further simplified the scene by getting in a little closer so the couch pillow is not in the frame (there’s only one pillow on the couch, the rest are thrown on the floor). If they would have all been neatly on the couch, then I might not have excluded them from the image because they would have helped to frame her.

In the unedited photo, I had the bottom part of the window frame in the top of my image that I chose to clone out.

This is what the room actually looked like. Not a very nice backdrop for clutter free images!

2. Change your perspective: get closer and fill your frame.

Getting in closer is a great way to exclude clutter from your frame. By filling your frame with your subject you are helping the viewer to focus where you want them to. The clutter and distractions are eliminated because you don’t have room for it in your picture. Getting in closer is great for detail shots, too.

Again, here is my messy living room. The baby is tickling sister’s toes. There wasn’t much going on this day so I figured I would try to get a few nice portraits. My older girl got annoyed with the baby tickling her toes so she moved to the floor just in front of the chair to camera right.

She sat on the floor for a few seconds before she laid down to continue watching cartoons. I knelt on my knees in front of her and told her to look at the dirt under her fingernails. Images can be deceiving! She looks so tranquil here but she’s actually annoyed at the baby and picking at the mud under her nails

All of the clutter from around the room is hidden because I got in nice and close in order to exclude it from my frame.

Read more about working around a cluttered home here.

Here are a few more examples of how changing your perspective by getting in closer to your subject can help hide the clutter:

In this image my little one was making me coffee one morning all on her own! I wanted to document this action as well as her messy, long hair, dirty bare feet and chalk on her bum (she was just playing outside in her undies!). This image is completely “her” and those are the details that I wanted the image to be about, not the distractions on the counter or the view of under my cupboards (gross!).

I wanted the details of her bare feet, chubby little hands and the cowboy hat that she had been wearing all day. Bonus is her button nose and her mouth that is always open when she is watching cartoons!

Easter morning is always a tough one for me. I don’t think that I have ever gotten images that I love, so I mostly just focus on documenting how the kids are interacting. This is what our table looked like. When I noticed the baby was backlit and framed by the window (and relatively still because she was occupied by the stuff on the table) I leaned in as close as I could in order to eliminate the other kid’s Easter goodies. I didn’t move anything here except myself.

These two were playing drums and having a dance party! I was pretty discouraged at first because I thought that I was not going to get the type of image that I wanted. My ISO was very high, there’s mixed lighting and overall, I was just not happy with what I was seeing in my viewfinder. Before I gave up, I decided to move in closer and wait for the right moment; with the clutter eliminated, the image now focuses on the girl’s connection and the baby’s shenanigans!

This day was our family bonfire and teddy bear picnic. While we were getting ready to have a bonfire, the little kids drug out 127 stuffies and set them all up on chairs. I was already stressing out about how I was going to get so many people in the frame before the 127 stuffies joined the party! I set up my photo for the best light and to block the house and the trucks from view then waited for a “moment”.

3. Change your perspective: shoot down on your subject.

When I have a room full of toys, junk or other people and I want to isolate my subject, I often stand on a chair or the coffee table in order to get a new perspective. My children are often playing on the floor, so this tip is something I use a lot because it’s easy to do… as long as I can find a clean spot on the floor!

At this time of the day, the light here is nice and soft and the way she was laying gave some nice shadows. I stood on the chair and leaned forward to frame my shot to exclude clutter on the floor and to have a pleasing angle in relation to her face.

By standing on the chair, I can choose to compose my frame in a way that excludes the mess of toys, pillows, and blankets thrown on the floor. It is further simplified because the furniture is also excluded at this angle.

Here are some more examples of excluding clutter from your frame by getting yourself higher than your subject and shooting at a downward angle.

Butterfly world!

This is the end of an in-home newborn shoot. We are in a small bedroom with two toddlers and mommy. In order to get a clutter free background, I laid baby on the bed and stood over top of him (with my camera strap securely around my neck and a firm grip on my camera). The bed becomes the clutter free background.

Okay, this is actually a wide angle image that I love more than it is a pullback. However, it does help illustrate how changing your perspective by getting higher and shooting down can eliminate distractions.

An added bonus for your subject looking up at you is you’ll get some nice catch lights in their eyes!

4. Change your perspective: get lower and shoot higher.

This is a great way to exclude clutter from your frame; I use this for both indoor and outdoor shots. This is what you’ll do in order to shoot for a silhouette.

I had actually cleaned this room already this day… honest! This happens to be my master bedroom. The baby and the 5 year old both sleep in here even though they have a brand new room with some pretty awesome built-in bunk beds. So that means that this room is kind of difficult to keep clean. They drag their toys in here, throw blankets around and enough crumbs to drawn in the ants.

My goal this day was to document the baby with her sooky blanky and sucking her fingers. She was just waking up from a nap and this is what I had to work with.

I had to change my perspective in order to eliminate the clutter on the floor. I knelt down on the floor and waited for her to stand up in her crib in order to shoot with the plain wall as a backdrop (the only clean area in the room!).

This is what I got. It is one of my favorite images of her. In my SOOC, there was a light switch on the wall that I cloned out. Other than that, this was a pretty clean background.

See some mind-blowing pullbacks here.

Again, this isn’t a true pullback; it’s a wide angle image that I happen to love but it shows what the background looked like for the next image and how changing your perspective can totally change your background.

This wasn’t my idea! My little fella asked me to lay down in the field and shoot so the sky was behind him. So I did and what a good idea it was! We were in the field for about half an hour and I was running out of unique ideas for pictures. This perspective really adds something different to this gallery. To get this shot, I laid on my back in the grass and shot up at him with the blue sky as the background.

We have this really cool hill next to our shed and I really like the perspective I get when I sit at the bottom of the hill and watch the kids play in the driveway. If there wasn’t a tree line there, it would be a great place to make silhouettes!

Among our regular toys and clutter, this image also has Christmas decorations (I may go a little overboard with Christmas decorations). I moved around to the side of the table so the clean, plain wall was the backdrop and excluded all of the decorations in favor of framing lines from the table and chairs.

I may have laid in horse poop for this one! I got down low for the first silhouette but it wasn’t low enough to exclude the tops of the trees or the fence posts. I asked her to take one step forward to block the fence post and then I got in closer and shot at a higher angle in order to have the plain, clean sky as a background.

I don’t always try to exclude clutter from my frame. I am a family documentary photographer so clutter is part of the story but there are times when I just want something simple and pretty and I use these tips on changing my perspective to get a cleaner image. Most of the time, it’s a lot easier than tidying up!

How do you shoot pretty photos among everyday clutter?