Sleeping in. It’s a luxury some of us only get to experience on the weekends, or maybe even rarer than that. I allow myself to sleep in just about everyday. I love hitting the snooze on my alarm, stretch out my limbs, then scoot on over to my husband’s side of the bed and snuggle in close to his warmth for just a few minutes more.
In our house, the recipe for a perfect sleep in has to include a lofty duvet and feather pillows. These elements just envelope me like a cloud whether I’m dreaming or languidly hiding under the covers willing myself to greet the day. White bedding sighs of zen, calm, and peace.
Waking up from such a comfortable and inviting bed involves many steps:
- Open the eyes.
- Close the eyes because they hurt from the deep sleep.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 until eyes open to their fullest without pain.
- Bury self deeper into feathered comforts as I ponder the idea of stealing a few more zzz’s.
- Throw duvet back.
- Slowly slide out of bed planting feet firmly on floor.
- Glance at bed once more as I head to the bathroom, resisting the urge to jump back in.
After my face is washed and the bed is made, I can start my day. Do you share a similar routine? What’s your favorite part of mornings?
For details about this challenge, read this post here.
It’s not too late to participate! If you have a styled shoot of a morning scene you’d like to share, feel free to link it in the comments below. If you want to officially join the challenge with us, let us know here. Stay tuned for next month’s concept: Bedroom.
Make sure to check out the other participants of this challenge:
Other styled photos from this challenge:
Photography Styling Challenge #1: Food
Photography Styling Challenge #2: Table Setting
Photography Styling Challenge #3: Wall Vignette
Photography Styling Challenge #4: Morning
Photography Styling Challenge #5: Bedroom
Photography Styling Challenge #6: Order
Photography Styling Challenge #7: Chaos
Photography Styling Challenge #8: Patterns
Photography Styling Challenge #9: Fashion
Photography Styling Challenge #10: Light
Photography Styling Challenge #11: Living Room
Photography Styling Challenge #12: Personal
Its difficult to resist a warm comfy bed, especially on week days.. and your bed looks super comfy and inviting.
Pic 2 is simply perfect - grey wall followed by designed pillows, then a plain one and finally the simple lined duvet - 4 beautiful subtle layers in one pic. Great Job M!!
Thank you so much, Namrata! Since last month’s was so colorful, I decided to remove all the color from this month and use texture to convey my concept.
Hi M! I love your bedding! It looks so comfy and inviting
Thats the biggest thing I miss about home and being here in Korea, all the funny comfoter things they have here. I miss my feather duvet! 
Lovely photographs, so simple and beautifully captured.
Thanks so much, Roxy! When I was in Korea, I kept the plastic on my mattress for the entire year. I would’ve taken it off, but I always knew I’d only be there one year, so just didn’t bother with removing it. Still, it’ll never beat the feathers of a really awesome bed! ~M.
I too own a down comforter. I too, can not leave bed easily. I wold wallow all morning, if only I didn’t have tiny fingers prying my eyes open. These photos are great, I love that you didn’t add a pop of some color, because that would have been my impulse.I think that the clean simplicity of the whites really pulls out the textures here. I love textures. I have taken from your post (that I hope to incorporate into my next shoot): the telling of a story around the photos instead of (or in addition to) walking the reader through my mental process of styling and shooting. As always, awesome work.
Thanks, Nicole! You’re welcome to write up your post in whichever way you like! I just like to explore the writer in me once in awhile and this concept I chose seemed to call for a more poetic story than a directive of “I threw the bed covers just so in order to attempt lushness and punched the pillows to look as if someone had slept there.” Perhaps in a different theme, I would write all that, but this one seemed to be self-explanatory through just the telling of a story.
I really wanted this to be entirely without color, primarily because last month’s was so colorful, plus I adore white bedding. Have tried to make up for the lack of color through texture. Thanks for noticing! ~M.
I love the monochromatic images! Did you try getting a fuller picture of the bed (for the overhead shot)? I love the gentle depression on the pillow in the second shot. The first one does convey a ‘staged’ look with the straight pillows and all.
Haha.. I couldn’t get the whole bed in the overhead shot because our bed is two feet off the ground and we only have 8′ ceilings. Plus we have a king bed, so I would’ve needed to be about another 5′ off the ground to get the full image. I thought about staging our air mattress on the floor in the living room or something, but just couldn’t be bothered, to tell you the truth!
All the images are staged, actually! The first one just looks more pulled together because the pillows are all upright. But I carefully arranged the folds and depressions in each image in order to get the messy-just-got-out-bed-after-refusing-to-wake-up look. Doing this is actually harder than if I had shot a perfectly made bed. There’s just an art to making it look “elegantly slept in.” Hope I’ve captured it a bit!
a completely white post and it was more interesting that people generally give white pics credit. I love the second shot but I do feel like I have missed out on something without the whole bed in the frame. But then, this IS more artestic. Love it!
Thanks, Vaish! I intentionally shot only a portion of the bed to tease the viewer a bit and make them wonder what’s beyond this side of the bed… to perhaps explore under the covers and maybe take a dive in for a little shut-eye. Since my story focuses more about ME sleeping in, it just made more sense to me to only shoot half the bed. I also intentionally chose white because A) I love white bedding, B) white seems to me to be the perfect color to represent morning, C) white was the only color I thought that could best convey the inner turmoil I feel each morning at wanting to sleep in, but knowing I have responsibilities to attend to that I can’t sleep in.
My favorite shot is the 2nd one. I like the concept of the bed and waking up in the morning. One thing that could be fun to play with is a spot of color or something to anchor the eye with more. or perhaps to crop out all of the gray and black and just go all the way white. Another thing is to play with the camera’s white balance settings, this will insure the whites comes out really white and make your pictures even more dramatic.
I have still so much to learn about my camera! Sadly, I haven’t read my manual yet.
Would you mind helping me to speed up my education by advising which settings I should fiddle with to achieve better white balance? I shot this in Manual and have a really tough time getting my whites, no matter how much I play with in f-stops, apertures, and white balances. Not just with this shoot, but in other photos, I keep getting a yellowish cast!
The omission of color was intentional to symbolize a clean slate as the start of a new day. Had I cropped the images to only white, I feared the photos would be REALLY uninteresting.
Break out the manual you can do it! hehehe.. But awesome job shooting in manual setting. It’s hard at first, but worth it in the end. Does you camera have a Kelvin White balance setting, because this can help. It makes your white balance setting more specific. Also were you shooting with different quality lights, i.e. window light and interior lights or just one source of light? This can also make it more difficult to achieve a good white balance setting.
It was all shot in natural light and not much of it, I’m afraid. Our house just does not get bathed in natural light! That’s why the image looks a bit gray, but I was hoping the lack of light would give it that cozy-let’s-shut-our-eyes-for-just-a-minute-longer effect.
Great post! I am a total insomniac! I seem to get the best sleep in the morning (when I should be getting up!) I had to laugh to myself when I read your morning routine! I seem to have the same routine. I’ll intentionally set my alarm at least a half an hour before I absolutely have to get up in order to allow for enough time to hit the snooze button several times!
Love your pictures!
~Jen
What a relief it is to hear that I am not the only one who loves to hit the snooze button! I swear I get the stink eye from anyone who presses their snooze only ONCE like I’m an idiot for sleeping another half hour past the first alarm sound. Thanks! ~M.