No light at the end of the box

As you know, I tried to make a lightbox recently. It appears that one of these things is essential for getting your craft wares photographed nicely for sale. They provide a clean, crisp background for your products, and capture the light properly. Well, anything which helps take nicer photographs is fine by me for the following reason;

I AM HOPELESS AT PHOTOGRAPHY.

So I looked up "Lightboxes". They're expensive. Too expensive for me. I saw one on eBay (gggrrrr!!!) which was about $10, but the p&p turned out to be something like $45,00000.

But help was at hand - some of my fellow crafters had made their own for less than a tenner, using only an old box, a discarded sheet, some scissors, tape and a bit of card. And apparantly, the whole thing would only take thirty five seconds to produce!!! And look, here are the instructions!!!

I got snipping. Several hours, a lot of debris on the carpet and a very red and angry face later, I produced this pile of rubble;


That badger is not impressed. Small Cat's plastic trees are pathetic. It looks like some stuff in a box which has been butchered by an angry woman with a red face and draped with badly cut fabric. But hang on a minute.... with a bit of fine tuning, you get this little beauty....


It's uncanny! You could almost believe you were in an ACTUAL FOREST!! Just looking at this I swear I can hear the twitter of birdsong and the distant sound of gunshot.

I think the main problem was the failure to establish the correct lighting. Daylight bulbs (almost impossible to find, but I did eventually track some down) are all well and good, but taking a photograph with one hand whilst waving a table lamp above your head with the other isn't how a professional is supposed to work.

This one wasn't too bad though. You can see a reasonable amount of detail. I don't remember him having red eyes when I took the picture. Blasting him with a flashlight and a daylight bulb obviously took their toll.



To end on a high note - the Gelati box in the picture belonged to Ex Mr Limecat. Cutting it to shreds was in some ways quite cathartic. Yes, childish I know. But I don't care.