Jason and I built a light box a couple of years ago and used it for a little bit, but then it got shoved into the closet for awhile. Lately (this past month) I’ve become more and more interested in improving my photography skills. They have improved from my earlier Craft Leftovers Posts, but still lacking. I am an artist dang it! I have a BFA! I should be able to come up with more interesting composition and take better looking product shots! Hahaha, well, I’m a painter, not a photographer, and like I said, I have improved over the last few years, but I feel like I’m ready to take the next step and really use my camera to it’s full potential. Part of that was pulling out the light box and getting to know it again. I mean what was I thinking not using that to take product shots! ha! (In my defense it was at Jason’s place and I didn’t have enough room at mine).
We used this tutorial and it’s still the best I’ve been able to find. There are a few more that are pretty good, just different styles. I like the one we used so much because it’s collapsible. Space saver is a plus!
Setting up:
(oh yes, that is a big candy painting on the wall, haha, I had so much fun painting that sweedish fish)
With Lights On:
Some shots (click to see larger):
Here are some of the other tutorials I mentioned:
Do It Yourself Photography Light Box for Under $40
How to build a food photography light stand
Light Box / Light Tent
How To: DIY $10 Macro Photo Studio
How to Make A Inexpensive Light Tent
They work so well, are all pretty easy to make, and will improve your product shots a million fold.
And then, I was looking through my rss feed and found all this that I wanted to share with you, it’s totally random and I saw a lot of it on either whipup.net or craftzine.com or the site that it is located on, but I can’t remember which is which now!:
The Toy Society
BittBox – Great tutorials and how to’s for adobe illustrator and photoshop and others (those are the two that I liked it for)
Starving Crafters – “A place to find the latest opportunities for artists, crafters, designers, and makers.”
Smallest Man-made Orange Polymer clay mini orange!
Pimp Stitch Realllly cute embroidery patterns.
All The Best Tips on Getting In Shape, In One Handy List
How to Make Exercise a Daily Habit (with a May Challenge)
Handprinting with Lotta Jansdotter on True Up
Exhibiting at the County Fair
Nesting – a wonderful artist to check out
How to Unleash Your Creativity Experts discuss tips and tricks to let loose your inner ingenuity
Well that’s it for today! I just got my sewing machine back from the repair shop today. It needed a tune up, the timing was a little off, and so I took it in to this little sewing machine repair shop and it was there for the last three weeks! I’m so happy it’s back. I’m going to go sew! Hooray! See you all on Saturday!
Great job on the light box. Thanks for the link too!
OOh you know I was just looking up light tent tutorials a couple of days ago. I think I’m going to make the cardboard box one when I get to feeling a bit better. I was trying to take some pictures of ny belt buckles and they look like crap so I’m sure the light tent will help. That starving crafters link looks cool too.
Thanks for the pictures and the links, Kristen. I’ve been making these beaded necklaces that I want to sell on Etsy but the photos turn out so bad so I haven’t posted them yet. I’ll be back in the U.S. next month and will have access to my tripod and I think I will make a light box. Those two things should help a lot.
Have a great time on your vacation.