Mobile Mondays: Working indoors with window light

Just because you can’t go outside doesn’t mean you can’t capture lovely photos indoors with your smartphone. Using my trusty Samsung S21 and some natural window light, I captured this pretty little still life.

I took a photo just with the smartphone camera, not too bad, but I think I can do better. I mean, it’s pretty, bright and airy, but I wanted something a little more dark and moody. Then, there is that reflection.

Behind the scenes

As you can see from the above behind-the-scenes image, my setup is pulled slightly to the right of the window, allowing for plenty of indirect natural light. Indirect natural light is far more flattering than direct light. Minimal soft shadows. This works great for portraits too. What you use to stage your scene is up to you. Fresh flowers, a book or two, a pretty teacup. I have some pre-printed backdrop panels which I used for the bottom and back…I used all of that as well as a stained glass window panel. This caused a few reflection issues, but I’ll show you how I fixed those.

Lightroom Mobile

I used Lightroom Mobile on my phone, opened the camera and took my photos using the Pro mode. Then, I switched to edit mode and used the new masking tools to mask and blur, as well as heal my arm reflection out. Now, it’s really just a blur. Brighten it up a touch and then used a pretty Vintage Preset for the finished results.

.mgl-tiles { display: none; } #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b { margin: -2.5px; width: calc(100% + 5px); } #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b .mgl-box { padding: 2.5px; } @media screen and (max-width: 768px) { #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b { margin: -2.5px; width: calc(100% + 5px); } #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b .mgl-box { padding: 2.5px; } } @media screen and (max-width: 460px) { #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b { margin: -2.5px; width: calc(100% + 5px); } #mgl-gallery-63cfe33c4c58b .mgl-box { padding: 2.5px; } }

So here is the final edited version captured and edited in Lightroom Mobile: