Heather’s Light Box

My oldest daughter-in-law is a genius.

She’d heard that I’d attempted to make a poor man’s light box, using items I had on hand, with very little in the way of success.  Last week she asked me if she could see what I did have, and maybe help me to fix it.  I gathered an assortment of items:

• clamp-on gooseneck lamps
• clamp-on spot light
• an old pressed-board end table with screw-in legs
• leftover white muslin fabric from sewing Allen’s renfair shirt
• a clear plastic box
• scotch tape
• scissors
• an extension cord
• white poster board

With these items, she guided me in setting up the light box correctly.  Now I already owned all the items to create the light box, but if I had to purchase them it still would have cost me less than $50.  I did purchase two new gooseneck lamps so that the light box had it’s own dedicated ones, rather than me stealing one from Mark’s desk and the other from my sewing area.

The main thing I had been doing wrong before was to put the fabric on the outside of the box.  The purpose of the white fabric is to diffuse the light so that harsh shadows soften and shine spots disappear or are greatly reduced.  But by putting the fabric on the outside of the box, the plastic was still picking up and reflecting too much direct light.

She helped me to cut and tape pieces of the white fabric to the inside of the box, thus creating a correct diffuser for the lamps, and it works like a charm.  It’s so great for photographing white-on-white, like these candle holders I just finished for a Memorial Beads customer.

  We put the light box in the closet with the fuse box, so that the ambient light would be greatly reduced and allow for dark photography, like showing the candle holder with a lit tea light inside.  Keeping the light box in the closet also allows me to use it at a moment’s notice; and yet it’s portable enough that I could disassemble everything in less than 5 minutes and put it into a rolling case.

Heather had created a new Memorial Beads design – the Leigh Bracelet – filled with memorial heart charms and crystal cubes.  She’d spent a little time with the new light box and her camera, taking some shots of her bracelet for our catalog.  It’s so nice now having a dedicated and ready place for us to take photos.  Thank you, Heather, for bugging me about this.  🙂

 

In other news…

I’ve finished my first week taking the Acai Berry capsules.  If you’re curious about how I’m feeling about it, take a look at my post “The Acai Berry Craze” and scroll down to see the update.

I’m almost finished with my friend Peggy’s anniversary dress.  She’s the one who’s wheelchair-bound and wanted something really special to wear to her 40th wedding anniversary party.  I’ll have pics of both the finished outfit, the shawl, and her husband’s tie next week.  It’s an adventure in adaptive sewing for the disabled, where we took a shirt pattern and turned it into a fitted dress with mock princess seams.  If you’d like to see a sneak peek at the dress in progress, head on over to my post on “Sewing Adaptive Patterns“.