Lifestyle photo: what is it and how to shoot?

What is a lifestyle photoshoot? Photographs should reflect life in a natural environment with sincere emotions and without staging or posing. In our article, we will tell you about the features of a lifestyle photo and how to properly conduct a photo session.

So, images in the Lifestyle genre are an illustration of simple life moments, everyday situations without embellishment. The main purpose of such photographs is to reflect reality as it is. At the same time, during the photo session, almost all types of filming are involved, from portrait and subject and ending with landscape and interior.

How does a lifestyle photoshoot differ from other styles? For example, unlike reportage shooting, where the photographer does not interfere with what is happening but simply captures, Lifestyle involves his communication with models, joint work on the choice of location, the genre of shooting, concept, etc.

In fact, a lifestyle photoshoot doesn’t require a lot of preparation. It can be done anywhere: at home, on the street, in the garden, in the office, in the theater, in the park, in the store, etc.

How to make a beautiful lifestyle photo

As we have already noted, serious preparation is absolutely not required for filming in this style. However, it is still worth paying attention to the basic recommendations. Let’s list some important nuances.

Lack of stiffness in front of the camera. This style (as, indeed, others) assumes a natural behavior as if the camera is not nearby. It’s better to forget about closed poses and stoop right away. They are capable of ruining absolutely any photo.

Interesting locations. Despite the fact that a Lifestyle photoshoot can be done anywhere, it is better if these are beautiful places, cities, countries. Modern photographers prefer city parks, streets with interesting buildings, and shopping centers as locations.

It is ideal when beautiful and exotic objects can appear in the frame, for example, a street musician in Barcelona or it could be a staged photo with a Mercedes rented in Dubai. And this is not surprising, because here life is boiling in all the variety of colors, and the photographs turn out to be trulyaliveand emotional.

Choice of style. Lifestyle photos can be done in absolutely any genre, including retro, hippie, old school, hygge, sports, the 80s, etc. Regardless of the genre chosen, the main thing is to convey the atmosphere and feelings of the model.

Shooting at a wide aperture. You can create a cozy atmosphere by focusing on the main thing, thereby hiding everything secondary outside of it. However, when the aperture is open, outoffocus light creates a beautiful bokeh effect.

Shooting without a hood. The presence of glare in the photo in the style of lifestyle looks very beautiful, so when carrying out a photoshoot on a sunny day, you can refuse to use a hood.

Custom cropping. It may seem to many that cropping a head in a photo, getting only arms or legs into the frame is unaesthetic. We hasten to dispel this myth: in this style, this is an absolutely normal phenomenon that will add dynamism and movement to the picture.

Using photo editors. Working with services that allow you to apply various effects to a photo is very important. Today you can find a huge number of photo editors such as Snapseed, VSCO, Afterlight, etc. In addition, if you want to print photos, you can use Instax mobile printers, where it is easy to perform photo editing before printing.

Summing up, we can say that the Lifestyle photoshoot allows you to get incredibly beautiful and atmospheric pictures. And in order to learn how to take spectacular and stylish photos, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with other materials on our blog.