My New Photography Setup In Progress

As the weather turns colder and rain becomes a possibility, while the sun continues to set earlier and earlier each day, a replacement for my makeshift outdoor photo studio has finally become necessary.  While the girls loved getting their photos taken in the evening light that so flattered their skin tone, they were starting to feel like it was a little chilly to be changing from one outfit to another in the backyard.  And they weren’t entirely certain that my dog wouldn’t decide that their shoes looked yummy enough to eat.  Point taken.

So I’ve been working on setting up a photo studio in my study.  My first attempt with sheets was really kind of a disaster, so that became a non-starter.  At that point, I moved outside.  Now that I had no choice but to solve the problem of needing an indoor space, I quickly realized that I could make a studio pretty easily inside mostly with materials I have on hand already.

The setup for my first iteration of the photo studio began!  Since I had a large off-white blackout curtain hanging over the patio doors in my study, I decided that I could drape the bottom of it over a card table to give a consistent background.  That worked OK, but not great.  There were too many gathers in the curtain so I couldn’t make it look right.  Plus, since it was off-white and not white, it messed with my white balance filters.  Even adding a white sheet over it as a backdrop didn’t work that well, since it was wrinkly.

Looking online, I found some tips on setting up a home photo studio, and I realized that I could install a white roller blind above the existing curtain that I could roll down and drape over the card table.  Since the fabric for a roller blind is reasonably stiff, it holds its shape better so that it doesn’t have too many wrinkles or edges.  This turned out to be a good solution.

Next, though, I was still having lighting issues, and my photography friend gave me a few pointers.  He hooked me up with a decent soft box kit and guided me on where to put the lights, and I had awesome lighting for professional looking photos, for less than $100 for everything I needed.  Not bad!