After many frustrating months of taking heaps of pictures of various products at home, shot after shot, each one not much better than the previous one, I was resigned to the fact that I was probably never ever going to have any decent product photos. Our apartment is built a little weird, we have very little sun coming into the living room and whatever rays that do make it in, will cast a horrible shadow. Oh and you know the worst part? The room that gets the most sunlight is......... the bedroom.
It does not make any sense at all.
Kindly allow me to digress, the Husband and I agree that they just don't know how to build apartments here. We've lived in quite a few apartments over the 7 years that we've been here and each one is just as bad as the next. One apartment had the toilet built right smack IN THE MIDDLE of the unit, with no ventilation whatsoever. Another had a toilet with a window, but no draft ever came through and despite us always leaving the window open, it always stunk of wet, stale clothes. And now this apartment, that only lets sunlight through via the bedroom. Also, the insulation between each storey is paper thin. I can hear every single movement that our neighbors upstairs make, yes every single movement. I know when he pulls out a chair to sit down, where he is walking to in the apartment, or when his wife is vacuuming. FML.
Aaaaanyway, back to topic. The lack of sunlight and the casting of shadows, makes taking photos very difficult. Additionally, we don't get home till after dark every day and all our lights at home are the warm and dim, orangey kind. As you can probably guess, taking product photos in that kind of light is not the best. So whilst I was away in Singapore last year on my own for 2 weeks settling our wedding stuff, the Husband decided to do some research into building a light box for me! I was very touched because it showed that he knew how frustrated I was with the shadow-casting at home and that he was trying to rectify that situation.
This was his "masterplan". He then told me that he could actually be an engineer................................
It's alright dear, I'll give you an A+ for effort!
Now, our apartment is teeny tiny and we don't have a lot of space to put stuff so I was initially against the idea of a light box because they are well, bulky, and I would have nowhere to put it.
Lo and behold, the Husband made a collapsible light box! Yay to innovation for small spaces!
The light box was made of corflute with sticky velcro bits to hold it together. You are supposed to put a light source outside the box (baking paper was used for the sides to soften the light coming through) but I found that I didn't need to, bouncing a flash off the top of the light box was good enough!
Takes just a few seconds to set it all up! I know collapsible light boxes have been around for awhile now but to have one right before me is quite exciting, haha.
Here's a sample shot using my Pandora bangle as the subject! Pretty good hey? I used the Husband's 35mm lens on his XE-1 to take this sort-of macro
shot. I don't know what kind of magical settings he had on his camera,
but it takes very nice close-up photos! So tempted to buy the Fujifilm
16-55mm f2.8 lens next! Primes are good but I prefer something with a
bit more flexibility!
Anyway, kudos to my everyday Prince Charming!
No comments :
Post a Comment