I've been asked how I take my photos, so I grabbed the camera off the tripod and took a shot of the set up. Trust me, it really IS this ugly, but it lets me take pretty good photos! The two clip lamps are clipped to a piece of 1x2 inch lumber hanging from wires in the overhead. I don't say ceiling, because, well, its NOT. At the moment the wires are hanging off a couple of clamps hooked onto the beams supporting my bedroom. I'm working on my router table (covered with a blue tarp) and using an old sheet of 150lb rough watercolor paper as a background. Its laying up against whatever is handy (in this photo its a packing box that eventually ended up in Hawaii). The big thing is I position the two lights so there are no dark spots, and sometimes I raise the camera and shoot down, sometimes I crunch it all the way down to the bench level. Every different type of piece requires resetting to get the best shot. Sometimes I pull the lights back and make the light hit more from the front, other times I take one down and hold it in just the right spot. Its a matter of looking through the camera so I can see what the shot will look like, and optimizing it with the best camera position, best light position, and sometimes even moving the subject to get it all just right.
Here's the shot you see set up above, unedited. To USE this shot, I adjusted the angle slightly (1 degree clockwise) then cropped it so the subject takes more of the frame. You can see the final shot here, this one is the center view in the third photo down, the one with 3 views.
banded pot on Etsy
I didn't have to adjust the levels with this one as I played with the camera settings, but if I forget to do that I usually have to adjust it in the editing phase. I use full spectrum OTTlite bulbs so the color is good, if you use standard florescent or incandescent bulbs, you might find your color wayyy off. Incandescent bulbs tend to make your photos look yellow or orange, while florescent bulbs give you an ugly green cast.
banded pot on Etsy
I didn't have to adjust the levels with this one as I played with the camera settings, but if I forget to do that I usually have to adjust it in the editing phase. I use full spectrum OTTlite bulbs so the color is good, if you use standard florescent or incandescent bulbs, you might find your color wayyy off. Incandescent bulbs tend to make your photos look yellow or orange, while florescent bulbs give you an ugly green cast.
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