Six compelling reasons to decorate your home with lifestyle photographs - Geelong Lifestyle Photographer.
My daughter in our Geelong home - completely chuffed with our latest piece of lifestyle wall art.
Traditional portraiture has always been a popular choice for wall art.
However, while these photographs may show you looking tidy and smiling nicely for the camera, there are now other ways to use photography to decorate your walls.
Storytelling photography is the newest style of lifestyle photography (at least in Geelong, Victoria).
It’s authentic and real and it documents your actual life, transforming the ordinary into something beautiful and captivating.
Here's that poster sized piece on the wall, along with the beginnings of a large lifestyle gallery. Our precious, gloriously imperfect life in pictures - what could possibly be better?
Here are just a few reasons why you should choose storytelling photographs for your personal picture galleries.
1. Lifestyle images are like personalised works of art.
Many people choose to hang art in their homes - it makes a space welcoming and warm.
A lifestyle photograph has the benefit of not only being a stunning portrait or captured moment of your family, but also existing as a piece of art in its own right - an image that tells its own tale and could stand alone in any space.
Here's one of our black and white wall galleries, located in our kitchen space.
This hub of our home is brought to life by these lifestyle photographs.
I wander past this wall countless times a day and it always makes me smile.
2. Lifestyle photographs tell the story of your family - your individualism, your uniqueness, your values.
Traditional portraiture can be super beautiful, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about the people in the photograph (save perhaps how good they may be at co-ordinating outfits!).
Lifestyle photographs tell us so much more.
They tell us about your relationships, how you interact with one another. They’ll capture you sneaking a squeeze with your daughter and the spontaneous wet kiss gifted to you by your sweet babe.
Even better, if you choose an in-home session, your photographs will reveal so much of what’s important to you - the spaces where you love to spend your time, the kids’ artwork on the walls in the background, the couch were your babies first learned to pull themselves up to standing.
Also, did you realise there are huge personal benefits to your children seeing photographs of themselves on the walls of your home? Read about it here.
Just two of the images documenting the legacy of the humble red highchair both my children used.
These lifestyle images are both displayed on the walls of our home.
3. Lifestyle photographs capture the personality and the quirks of your children.
Wouldn’t you prefer to frame photographs that capture the essence and personalities of your little ones - all the funny quirks you adore and always want to remember?
As a mamma, I yearn for photographs that show the way my son wrinkles his nose when he laughs, and the funny face my daughter makes when she’s surprised.
I want to see the photograph that documents how adorable my girlie looks in her jammies, or the one that heroes my son’s epic bed hair.
To me, those photographs slay the stock standard portrait.
There are posed portraits and then there is this. If this was your daughters, wouldn't you print this lifestyle photograph as big as you possibly could?
4. Lifestyle photographs freeze a moment and a period in time, preserving it forever.
I talk a lot about this because it’s something I so strongly believe in.
Our children grow so quickly.
That thing we take for granted today will be gone tomorrow. The only way to ensure we remember the tiny treasures of our past is to document them, to freeze time in a photograph.
So get the photograph of your son with his foot up and resting on the tray of his high chair while he leisurely eats his lunch.
Soon his legs will be too long.
Posed newborn photographs can be pretty, but THIS... this captures the beginnings and essence of everything. This one image brings meaning and purpose to everything we do. Isn't that something you could stand to see every day?
5. Lifestyle images are a reminder of what this life is all about, making the tough days that bit easier.
Parenting is a tough gig.
Heck, life itself is no cake walk a lot of the time.
Your photographs should be there to greet you when you wander along the hallway, or to brighten your morning when you enter the dining room for breakfast.
Traditional portraits may be nice to see, but they can be quite sterile.
They wont act as a constant reminder of the beauty in this life.
They wont encourage you to take pause and thank goodness for all the ways your life is wonderful and blessed.
They wont bring into stark relief the way your children are funny and ridiculous and everything that’s good in the world.
When you’re greeted by a photograph of your son over filling his breakfast bowl with too much cereal, the sun streaming through the window behind him so that his messy curls glow in the soft morning light, what could you possibly have to frown about?
6. Lifestyle photographs are a talking point and a source of difference.
The reality is, the vast majority of people you meet will have standard traditional family portraits in their home.
That’s okay - lifestyle photography (especially storytelling photography) is a relatively new way to document and celebrate the milestones of your life, and it's maybe not for everyone.
But if you’re someone a little different, someone who might like art in your home that’s a little less obvious and a little more original, then lifestyle photographs are absolutely the way to go.
It's not a traditional portrait. I'd go so far as to say it's so much better. See more of this epic beach family session here. This Geelong family were amazingly fun to photograph.
Let your walls be adorned with your family’s story.
Allow them to speak.
Choose photographs with heart and conviction.
When you wander down the hallway, feel the warmth they let out while they beat.
Do you long for some gorgeous and authentic photographs that will tell your family's story? Can you already imagine them decorating the walls of your home? I am a Geelong lifestyle photographer, so if you're in Geelong or Melbourne I can hook you up. Click here to book.