One of the first things I did after the semester ended in May was to make my own photography set up at home. I had an order of pots that needed photographing, and I was tired of lugging work back and forth to school or trying to share the photo studio, where it seemed, I always needed help setting up the background paper.
Since I would be using this in my home studio, which is too small to have both my work space and photo area set up at the same time, I designed it to be easily moved and stored. After a trip to Home Depot for the supplies I didn't already have on hand, I was ready to build.
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| Beginning the lightbox, seal your cardboard box on one end. Measure so that you have a one inch ledge to support your drop ceiling tile. Cut using a box cutter. |
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| Cut the drop ceiling tile with a plexi glass cutter to the interior size of the box, minus a little. You want a snug fit. I placed the textured side up. It does not affect the quality of the light this way. |
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| The lightbox sealed with the clamp light and bulb enclosed. I used a porcelain socket clamp light and a 120 watt daylight fluorescent. |
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| This is the support for the paper. It is seven feet tall. To secure the posts to the walls, I tacked strips of fabric to the wall. It works better than I expected. If I had had the room for two buckets of sand I would have used that instead. |
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| Here you can see both support systems. The front support holds the lightbox and is six feet in height. Here, too, you can see the bucket of sand I am using to support the PVC pipe. |
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| Here you can see that I used a zip tie around both the pipe and the clamp light so that my light will swing forward or back according to my needs. There is also heavy duty Velco on the back of the box for a piece of black matboard that I attach so I can create a gradient background. |
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| A better picture of the whole workings. Everything is designed to come apart so that it can be easily moved into and out of my studio space. I have left the background paper and support in place as it does not interfere with me making my work. A piece of plastic wrapped over the paper protects it from dust. |
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| All ready to go. |
