Ninedays Blog

I am big fan of the strobist home photographer revolution but sometimes I don't think you need to use fancy flashes and strobes or bright lights with umbrellas, sometimes you can make a beautiful photograph with just a subject, the light attached to your ceiling and some white packing foam.

The Final Product

Let's Tarantino this and show you my final outcome first.

Without using an external flash, my on camera flash or any other strobes of flood lights I took these lovely photographs. Just my overhead room light (with two 60 watt bulbs) and some white Styrofoam as reflectors.

The Lighting Setup

Here's a quick lighting diagram of what I was doing, though really, there's not a lot of stuff going on.

The Props

Though I did not use any off camera lighting I did use a lot of things I had around to really assist in making the best I could out of the light I had to work with.

1. Styrofoam packing sheets
   At work last months we got seven new filing cabinets (pre-assembled) that were all packed with four sheets of crisp white Styrofoam. I know that since Styrofoam has a matte finish it will reflect light very evenly, and since they are 1.5 - 2" thick they're fairly sturdy. Not to mention free!
   I took about eight of these 24x18x2" blocks home; only eight cause that's all that I could fit in my trunk.
2. Bed side table
   I use the same one that holds my alarm clock, just to put the subject on to elevate it to a comfortable tripod height.
3. Glass
   I used the glass from a frame I picked up on sale at Homegoods for $15 cause the frame was damaged. I had plans to put a new picture in the frame and clean it up but I broke the glass. Read on for that...
4. Mirror
   ...I'll tell you another day how I came into a mirror that is approximately 1/2 the size of the one that may and or may not have fallen off my bathroom door.
5. Shoji screen / privacy screen
   I'll use this to hold up my background. In the off season (when I'm not taking pictures) it serves to hide the mess in the corner of my room.
6. Black bedsheets set
   The pillow case will be used to cover the table to protect it from the glass or mirror and the flat sheet will be used as the background.

I can almost guarantee you have 1/2 of those things around the house and with you don't have you can pickup at a discount store for a great price and probably still be able to put it to good use.

How big does the mirror or glass have to be?

I really only needed the glass and mirror to be maybe 2ft square. Bigger is great but only necessary if you need that much reflection, which on a small subject like a flower and vase is adequate.

Setting the Scene

Glass Topping the Table for Subtle Subject Reflections

I put the black flat sheet over the Shoji screen, and put my bedside table about 3' in front of the screen so I could ensure that the background would be beyond the focal point and blur out any texture attributed to the bed sheet.

In the first two photos you see I put the pillow case over the table and the glass atop that. Then came the subject, the vase w/ flower. In the last two you see how I then used the Styrofoam reflectors to bounce light into parts of the subject that needed more light.

Click to enlarge
Excuse the quality, this is about behind the scenes remember ;) Quality is in the product.

Here are the photographs this setup produced

"Happy Outside, Sad Inside" by terriseesthings [?]

"Profile" by terriseesthings [?]

On the next page we'll cover two more setups: Styrafoam white background and mirror reflection. Still with just our simple props!