Lifestyle photography is without doubt my favourite genre of photography - one where you can capture an everyday moment or scene beautifully, and freeze that moment in time.

On the whole, this is how I capture my family every single day, rather than waiting for milestone moments like birthdays or the one-a-year family photos (which I love too, but in a different way!)

But of course, lifestyle photography has it’s challenges too, so here’s my five top tips for getting better child and family lifestyle photos.

I get it, we can all feel sometimes like it’s harder to take photos when we are stuck in at home, rather than in the great outdoors.

But there are loads of opportunities for capturing great photos of our kids indoors as well as out.

So today, I’ve come up with 8 ideas for photographs you take of your children at home, along with a few tips and tricks for each one.

Ready? Let’s go!

When I first started learning how to edit my photos, I followed a few different tutorials online, patched them together, and studiously applied them to each and every photo.

The result?

Eye blindingly bright, overly contrasty and saturated images, that looked like they had been edited by 10 different people.

(My eyes hurt just THINKING about those early edits 😎😵)

But you don’t have to make those mistakes too, because you’ve got me, and I’m not gonna let that happen!

So without further ado, here’s 7 deadly photo editing sins - and most importantly, how you can avoid them.

Have you ever found yourself wondering exactly WHERE an image that you’ve taken is?

Why you seem to have about 5 different copies of the same file kicking about?

Or you’ve been sat looking at your image for the last ten minutes wondering exactly what adjustments you should be making? Whether you’ve done enough?

If that’s you, then a) you are not alone and b) the chances are you’re missing something incredibly crucial - a Lightroom workflow.

Let’s be honest, the one thing that most of us have in common is that we struggle with not having enough hours in the day!

That’s why trying to find an extra hour or two to edit and manage your photos when you have about 874 OTHER things that need to be done that day can be trying to say the least.

I know this from experience: after I was a few years into photography I had gotten myself in a huge mess when it came to my photos, and I was spending hours each week trying to get them into some sort of order, not to mention carrying out long winded editing on all my photos.

One thing that made a huge difference to how much I could get through in less time was Lightroom, so today, I want to show you 5 ways that Lightroom has saved me countless hours each week…

This question “how long does it take to learn photography?” is one I’ve gotten in different forms several times over the last few years….usually by people who are feeling SO frustrated because they’ve spent months learning all they can, but still don’t feel like they have reached their goal.

Learning photography really can be overwhelming and frustrating, and sometimes we feel like we might not ever get there, or we’d just love to skip forward on the learning part and get the photos we want NOW.

So, just how long does it take to get good at photography, or at least good enough to take decent photographs?

Read on, and find out!

Whenever you try your hand at anything new, you are bound to make a few mistakes along the way! And learning photography is definitely no exception.

Although making mistakes can a good thing, as it helps us grow and learn as photographers, that doesn’t mean you have to make them all 😉

You can take advice from people like me, who have spent years learning and practising photography, and in my case, also spent the last seven years teaching OTHER folks how to do it too. That way you get a bit of a leg up so you can reach your goal more quickly, and with waaaay less frustration than the rest of us.

Without further ado, let’s crack on with 7 of the most common mistakes that new photographers make, so you can avoid them.

Have you ever found yourself wondering if the reason your images are always slightly soft or out of focus could actually be down to your LENS?

I know I did! For a while, back when I was just starting out, I missed focus on so many of my images that I began to think that surely my lens MUST be broken.

There is nothing more frustrating than getting the perfect image only to find it is that teeniest bit out of focus, so if you have a nagging feeling that your lenses may be at fault, then there is something you can do: test your lenses to make sure that they are focusing where they should.

If nothing else, this quick test will put your mind at rest that everything is working properly, or, in the worst case scenario, make you aware of the problem so you can fix it!

So, when you’re ready, let’s dive into how to quickly check the focus of your lens for front or back focus issues.

Are you feeling completely overwhelmed with all the things you need to learn in photography?

Do you find yourself confused about where to start, or what your next step should be?

Then you are most definitely not alone! I know exactly what it feels like because I was there too.

I remember feeling like I was being pulled in 10 different directions at once, seeing all these different paths to I thought I needed to go down and learn, with shiny new camera gear pulling my eye away from the prize with promises of better photos.

It can be a confusing and frustrating time for sure, and if you are not careful, you can find yourself wandering aimlessly around the internet, picking up random “tips and tricks”, learning lots, but not actually moving forward and getting better photos.

So I wrote this blog post to help with that, by breaking down the areas you should be focusing on FIRST, because they will help give you that solid foundation on which everything else is built upon.

In today’s blog post, I’m going to give you some tips for storytelling photography, PLUS a framework that you can shoot to that will help tell your story through your images.

But, first, what exactly IS storytelling photography?

For me, storytelling photography is when we go deeper with our photos to not just show a scene, (for example a landscape) but when we actually use our images to tell a story, from beginning to end.

Although in many cases you may be able to tell a story in just one frame, there are many times when we want more than just one solitary picture of an event or activity, or we NEED more simply because one photo just couldn’t possibly get the full breadth of the story across.

This type of photography can be used for absolutely anything - it definitely isn’t limited to “big” days like weddings, birthdays or big adventures! (Although of course those are fabulous times to use this too!) Even the smallest everyday moments like breakfast or bath time can be turned into a story, so without further ado, let’s first go over the 5 step framework for telling a story in your images….

Making mistakes is all part of learning photography. In a way, it's how we come to realise what we cannot do, and what we need to spend some time focusing on - so you should never feel bad about making mistakes, it's all part of the process of achieving your goal!

In this blog post I wanted to share some of the mistakes that I have made in photography over the years, and most importantly, the lessons I have learnt from them!

I think these lessons are applicable at ANY stage of your photography journey, whether you are a beginner or a more experienced photographer, and will hopefully have the same positive impact on you as they had on me.

Let’s dive in…

If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that I am a HUGE Lightroom fan. Not only it is a fantastic photo editor, but it saves me so much time each week!

I want YOU to love Lightroom too, so that’s why in this week’s post, I’m going to go over 5 Lightroom tricks and tools that are worth their virtual weight in gold, so that you can experience them too.

So you’ve beautifully edited your images in Lightroom, and you’re ready to share your fabulous images with the world…….

But when you upload your image to Facebook, it looks either too soft, too crunchy, or simply a pixelated mess, and nothing like the gorgeous image you saw in Lightroom!

The problem’s not you (or at least not only you) as Facebook and Instagram will compress our images when we upload them if we make them too big, simply to reduce the file size, and save on their bandwidth space.

We want to do all we can to avoid that happening, so in this post I’m going to go over step by step how you can export your images from Lightroom to make sure your images look fab on all social media platforms!

We have all thought it when learning photography….is it worth taking a photography course? Will it make any difference? Can’t I just learn everything online for free?

It’s such a great question, and one that I can’t believe I haven’t covered this on the blog up until now!

Having gone from taking the worse photography course imaginable, to trying to learn it myself for free (for several years) to now having taken more photography courses than you can shake a stick at, I have my fair share of experience on the subject 😁

(Plus of course, I have since created my OWN photography course so I also have the benefit of seeing this from the other side too, along with the experiences of hundreds of students!)

So, today we are going to dive into four reasons why a photography course just might be worth it for you, so you can decide once and for all whether to take the plunge or not!

Raise your hand if you could do with some easy tricks for getting better photos?!

I know that when you are just starting out - heck, even after you have been shooting for a while - you'd like to know what you should concentrate on first, and what areas will give you the most "bang for your buck" in terms of time vs result. 

So that's what I've aimed to do today: give you 7 different tricks that will dramatically improve your photos. Many of these are simple to implement, and even the ones that take a bit longer are SO worth learning about, that I couldn't NOT include them!

As with most of my posts, it ain't short, so grab a coffee, and get stuck in....