Derek has been working on his portfolio to apply for grad school and asked me to take photos of his work. I was flattered because even though I take most of the photos for the blog, I actually have no formal photography training whatsoever. In college I studied Business Management with a minor in Graphic Design. Not once have I taken a photography class or lesson. But what I lack in training, I make up for in observation. After years of staring at all of the gorgeous photos that appear on various blogs I frequent, I found my way into photography.
For Derek’s portfolio we wanted to make it look as professional as possible. So, we decided to use the photo studio at the college we attended. The art department had photography equipment and a rather nice studio, at least they use to. Everything seemed to be going as planned until we arrived at the photo studio to take pictures. We were led in by one of the new photography professors and as soon as they opened the door, “gasp!?!” I knew there was no way we were taking photos in this environment.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. What was once a clean and pristine room full of soft boxes, a shooting table and a fantastic backdrop, now resembled a shanty town. There was all of this furniture consuming half of the space, while the other half had a few folding tables and miscellaneous debris. There were no light boxes and the only lights they had left were locked up in a closet. We later found out that someone had broken the photo shooting table. This room used to be super clean and organized and now it was a hot mess. I was pissed. Not only because the professors had carelessly let it go, but now I had to figure out how we were going to take photos of Derek’s work. Ugh!
Luckily, on our ride home I remembered a DIY photo light tent tutorial I found online. I used this once before to take photos of a business card and to expand my abilities in photography. I had good luck with this set-up but my knowledge of lighting was still lacking. I was determined to get Derek the photos he deserved and to make an indoor setup with good lighting. I didn’t stick to the tutorial this time, but I did use it as inspiration for another structure. All I needed was form core, tracing paper and a white backdrop. That’s it. So we ran to our local art supply warehouse and purchased a few large sheets of foam core and a pad of large tracing paper.
At home, we cut out windows in the foam core that would fit the tracing paper and taped the tracing paper to the foam core. We made three panels so we could assemble a light tent. For the backdrop we already had a large roll of white fabric so we draped that over one of our tables in the studio. The halogen light that we use for exposing our screens was hung over the light tent we had created. It wasn’t pretty, but…well, just look at the results. With a touch of Photoshop, the photos turned out beautifully. Not too shabby for a makeshift photo studio.
