I originally wanted to photograph my shot glasses as more of an exercise is photographic tech than in having a pictorial of them (although, if I can get this project off the ground, it would be nice to use Blurb to make a book of my shot glasses for posterity).
This idea meant that I would need to make a light tent. I found a nifty set of instructions on the Digital Photography School as to how to make one:
It isn’t too bad. But this is v2.0 of Operation Light Tent (the first one was destroyed in an unfortunate finger-poking accident – but hey: a lesson in the Buddhist practice of impermanence!).
I built the light tent, created a set up, and photographed my whole collection.
The results are “meh” at best.
In addition to some work with setting up a light tent correctly, I’m sure that the prop setup could be improved, as well as some tweaking in Photoshop.
But, it’s a start.
Ben’s a much more talented photographer than I, so I’ve expanded my “take photographs of my shot collection” and “set up a studio for my art” to be more focused. He and I are planning on building our own mini photographic/light studio.
I’m hoping that this will be both a studio for our light tent, and also a portrait-shooting zone. The one I took of myself for my pseudo-business portrait is okay, but it’s not great.
Some links I ran into while researching this article:
- The Party Bouncer is Back in Business (Card) use a 3×5 card to soften a flash that is built into the camera.
- DIY, Poor Mans Ring Flash use an empty milk jug to build a flash diffuser that fits around your lens. Thrifty and green!
- Putting Together a DIY Budget Light Room with a lot of ingenuity and a little cash, you can build a lightroom
The Blog of JulZ 
