Shooting at home: Stairs & Hallways
With many of us currently at home or in lockdown, opportunities for photoshoots are mostly confined to where we live!
Don’t worry – even if you don’t have a home studio, there is still a
huge range of subjects you can shoot at home which will be relevant for
the publishing industry.
In this series of posts we’ll be sharing our tips for shooting at home. We’ll also suggest popular concepts and themes for book publishing which can be shot in different rooms and spaces wherever you live!
Stairs & Hallways
The connecting spaces in our homes – hallways, landings, staircases – are good places to shoot book cover imagery. Cover designs for domestic thriller in particular will often make use of these settings..
It’s common for these areas to lack natural light, creating scope for ominous shadowy scenes.
Closed doors can be suggestive of secrets, concealment, claustrophobia or confinement, whereas open doorways can hint at liberation or escape.
Staircases and views along passageways can create mystery by hinting at things out of sight; you can also suggest the viewpoints of different characters by looking up or down a flight of stairs.
Family, togetherness and belonging can be suggested by images of shoes and coats on pegs. Correspondingly, discarded clothes or empty coat hooks might suggest a missing person.
Tip for Home Shoots: Make a schedule
Write down what you want to shoot and when, so that you can organise your day and make the best use of available time and lighting.
Draw up a list of objects around the house you could shoot, and add to it as any new ideas come to mind.
We hope this gives you some starting points for home
photoshoots – over the rest of this series we’ll suggest some themes and
book cover concepts that can be shot in each room of the house!
Find more tips for photoshoots:
