My photo setup

Quick rundown of how I do my photos.




Had a few people ask about how I do my photos with the new backdrop. Here's the quick rundown.

I start with my workbench, (relatively) cleaned off. If you look above the boards, hanging on the pegboard is my backdrop:

I unroll the backdrop, which is actually faux marble countertop paper. I then tuck it into the drawer below to keep it in the backdrop look. I wanted something that broke up the typical bland white that most photos are done with. The marble gives it a bit of visual interest, while still remaining mostly color neutral to keep the colors right:

Finally, set up the lights. They're just typical lamps, with Monoprice pure white LED bulbs inside. I do a custom white balance just to be safe, but the bulbs put out really pure white, instead of having that "orange" tint most incandescent lights have, then having to fix it in photoshop. I then tape some tracing paper over the bulbs to disperse the shadows.

I used to use a light tent, but just never could get my colors right, and the setup time was awful, and I had to take over my whole kitchen table to take a few photos. The fabric couldn't disperse the shadows properly....look at my earlier shots, and you'll see some that still look a bit muddy in the mid-section between highlights and shadows. This setup seems to fill light in much better.

Hope this helps! There are a zillion more in-depth tutorials, that are way more scientifically and mathematically accurate about how to set up the camera, etc, so I won't go overboard here, but hopefully this helps somebody out there.