Sure, the “Golden Hour” provides photographers with gorgeous lighting, but search for other beautiful light that helps tell the story when you are shooting indoors or outside of the golden hour. Figure out what kind of story you want to tell and use light accordingly.

Some great kinds of light to look for is sidelight, back light from a window, artificial lighting (tablet shining, flashlight, etc).

Read more: How Dramatic Natural Light Can Inspire Your Photography

Be sure to tell the full story by capturing the details. Their tiny fingers wrapped around yours, their long eyelashes, their favorite toy, the book they are reading. There are so many details that make up a story, be sure to capture the whole story with wide-angle shots as well as the details.

I tend to use the rule of thirds and leading lines a lot when capturing every day photos of my kids. The rule of thirds is simple. Imagine your photo as a grid Shoot your photos with your subject in one third of the image.

In horizontal photos make the focus of the picture on either the right or left third of the photo. In vertical pictures make your focus in either the bottom or top third.

When shooting leading lines you can find inspiration everywhere. Some examples of leading lines can be stairs, fences, roads, bridges, shorelines, etc. Lines are everywhere!

Be creative and find ways to incorporate those lines to draw attention to your focal point.

Read more: 7 Everyday Places to Find Leading Lines

I absolutely love shooting from above. I think it gives a whole new perspective and tells the story differently then if you were shooting from straight on. I particular love this angle when capturing my kiddos doing something they love, like reading, painting, playing cards, etc.

It is all part of capturing the details. If you are a birth or lifestyle shoot this angle is particularly lovely when you capture a photo from above of the new mom with her baby on her chest.

I’ll be honest; when I pull out my wide-angle lens in the house it sometimes scares me when I realize how much of the mess I can actually see in the frame. But, I have learned to embrace the mess and capture the whole story. Or I just push the clutter behind me while shooting in that room.

A wide-angle lens (35mm or smaller) is usually better in smaller homes. I absolutely love my longer-range prime lenses, but they don’t always work in all the rooms in my house. I absolutely love when you can see everything going on around the subject in the frame. In my house it is usually a very curious dog.

This is one of my favorite ways to capture those everyday images. Whether it’s for a client or my own family I love capturing the emotion and love the family shares. These moments and memories are the frames that will mean the most to us in the future.

Take advantage of this simple tool. By adjusting your aperture and deciding how much of the background you would like in focus with your subject it can change the feel of your photo.

As mentioned above, my house isn’t always clean and I usually like to blur out the background as much as possible while still having sharp focus of my subject. By shooting wide open (the lowest aperture your lens allows) I am able to have a shallow depth of field and blur out the background while still keeping focus on my subject.