It's not the first time that I'm blogging about my photo setup. The last time was for a Jewelry Artisans Community blog carnival. I talked about cat hair, daylight lamps, my old camera and more. That was in 2020.
One year ago, things had changed as der Dekan discovered the light tent. He has not been able to stay out of it since then. We had some epic fights in which I tried to remove him from the tent and he tried to hold on to everything around him with his claws, including my acrylic plate.
The other day, I decided something had to be done after der Dekan had visited the light tent a few more times, this time trying to get behind the cardboard in the back, the fabric on the side and the plate. He almost came down with the whole thing more than once.
It was obvious that I needed a photo box I could close. I had a look around and found that for the box to be a bit sturdier than my light tent I would have to give up my daylight lamps and settle for light strips inside the box instead which is annoying when you use a mirror background. They all looked pretty much the same, so I finally chose one and set it up last night.
It's portable, therefore the edges hold together with velcro. Only time will tell if that will hold up to feline attacks. The two light strips kind of make the top sturdier than the old tent. However, der Dekan has already been up there twice so far, and I'm not sure if they are going to be strong enough for that, so I'm thinking about taking them off after each photo session. On the other hand, I'm also not so sure if the velcro alone will stand up to his furry butt!
Of course he's not all that happy about me taking his wonderful cat cave away, but I will put it in the other room for him to play in until he will have got tired of it which I guess may be sooner rather than later if it's not forbidden anymore.
The things we do for or because of our furry overlords, huh?
Now I have to learn working with this new box and especially the lights which I'm not all that happy about yet, sigh.
And der Dekan has to learn not to throw a tantrum about not being able to enter the new box, come running, and knocking one of my pictures off the wall! Little punk.
(... please sing to the tune of "My Favorite Things" from "The Sound of Music").
Only these are not necessarily my favorite things. The May/June blog carnival at the Jewelry Artisans Community has the topic "Photography". What is your photo setup, what backgrounds do you like, how do you edit your pictures, what camera do you use?
When I started out taking digital pictures - that was before I had an online shop - I had an HP camera. I don't remember the model, but I bought it used from another university employee. We met in the dark of the morning like agents on a bridge and exchanged the goods. Even digital compact cameras were still very expensive back then, even used ones.
Eventually my camera started turning all pictures a lovely purple where there was no purple. I'll never forget how a jewelry forum member told me I was trying to milk a dead dinosaur. I still had hopes that with my finding out the secrets of white balance and exposure I would find the magic cure and that it was my fault, but alas, that wasn't the problem. I had to say goodbye.
I got my Canon PowerShot SX100IS almost exactly 11 years ago and - knock on wood - I'm still quite happy with it. Of course it has one or the other problem, but those are usually things that I can deal with in photo editing.
I use an online editor called PicMonkey. I used to edit with Picnik, but they left me (and everyone else meaning they closed down to move on to other stuff). PicMonkey had a lot of features that were similar to Picnik, so I didn't have to learn everything all over again. I am completely clueless about for example Photoshop or Gimp or what else is out there, so I hope the Monkey will stay with me.
Now let's get to my photo setup which is almost as old as my camera and consists of a light tent, two daylight lamps, white cardboard, a smaller black acrylic glass stand and a bigger black acrylic glass disk (actually I have a smaller light tent as well which is staring down at me from top of the cabinet next to me, but I can't remember why I ever got it, so I'll pretend it's not there, shhh).
That should already tell you something about my favorite background. I like a black background although I took my first pictures on a white one (so my HP camera could turn that purple as well). The stand is already my second one. I used a lot of props when I had the first one, deco rocks and glasses and bowls, and I wasn't very careful with it, so it got scratches which I then had to edit out. Very annoying.
I wasn't that much better with the second one, also it was too small for some of my big necklaces, so it now serves the purpose of holding the black disk which doesn't completely fit into my tent as you can see.
Yes, my light tent IS sagging. I tend to store stuff on it like my fake grass that I use for critter pictures. In fact I cleared some stuff off to take this picture.
Maybe you are now surprised about those shadows and wonder how I deal with them when taking photos.
This is what I see when I sit in front of my light tent.
You can see the light coming through the fabric on the left and you see something darker in the middle and something on the right.
I said part of my setup is white cardboard. The tent came with some different fabric backgrounds, but we didn't get along. I also never got used to the fabric you could attach to the front. It had just a small space in the center for you to put your camera through. As you can see, I tried it out, that's why there's velcro along the opening which is only good for catching cat hair now.
Instead I put a bigger piece of cardboard inside which covers the back and the top of the tent and thus makes for a nicer reflection in the acrylic glass. I also have a smaller one on the right because the combination of reflection and light always manages to bring my stained glass windows into the game. By moving the cardboard pieces I can make the shadows look different and always get a diffuse light area on the left, but sometimes, depending on the size of the jewelry, I still have to deal with the "light slits" on the right. That's one occasion for PicMonkey's "Clone" and "Dodge" or "Burn" ... if my beloved "Wrinkle Remover" fails, that is.
I'm doing all of this quite intuitively as I'm absolutely no pro and will never be.
I also want you to meet my trusted friend, the microfiber cloth. Acrylic glass LOVES dust and cat hair. One nanosecond of distraction, and there is both, so I always have one of these cloths around to dust before I take a picture. It usually doesn't get rid of them all because the queue of volunteers is so long that they sometimes shove each other for the chance of getting on that black disk first.
That's where PicMonkey's "Shine Reduce" comes in which I can't find in the new version, though. If that doesn't do it, it's back to the features mentioned above.
I'm sorry if I robbed you of all illusions of my professionalism here ;-) but it's working for me, and that's what it's all about, right? I think these may be the strangest pictures I ever posted in my blog!
What have the other JAC members got to offer?
I'll add the links as soon as I get them.
Jewelry Art by Dawn
