I usually photograph my projects for upload in my basement under fluorescent lights. These photos certainly haven’t looked very fresh. And there are often reflections on the photos from the lighting. When I have sun, which is rare here in the Pacific Northwest, I use the kitchen table sitting in a south facing window. These look better, but have other problems such as having a narrow time frame in which to work. In an effort to take some better pictures of my projects whenever I need to, I searched the web on tips for lighting.
In my search I found a blog called Strobist. I know nothing about this blog other than it had a fabulous idea for a homemade (and cheap!) light tent. He jokingly estimated it would cost $10 to make this. I gave the instructions a try. I managed to scrounge up all the ingredients I needed from stuff I already had on hand and my total cost was $0. Now that is awesome!
Here is his example
And here is what I came up with.
I used a cardboard shipping box (that scrap supplies came in!), some tissue paper from my gift wrap stash and blue painters tape. I scrounged around the house and found a few desk lamps that I could use for lighting. While the Strobist blog post said this is practically foolproof I still find I am having trouble. Part of that is not knowing how to use my camera well. I am getting a heavy yellow color cast that I have to edit away in Photoshop Elements. The other part is that my desk lamps still aren’t enough light. I have light coming from top and one side. I need light coming from the third side as well. The light I am happiest with is the bare 100w bulb in a broken lamp base. If I could have a couple more of these then I think I could get something much smoother. But for now it is far better than what I had before. I will be tweaking over time and let you all know if I come up with any improvements.
So go check out Strobist‘s blog post about the light tent and see if you can craft up your own.
craftysoup.com 