Like To See My Fancy Smancy Photography Studio?

Hmmmm…this is a bit awkward.    

I don’t actually have a photography studio.

Heck I barely have an office, let alone light boxes, backgrounds, lighting, reflectors for photography.  

But I thought there might be one or two people who maybe are in the same boat so I thought I would share how I improvise…

how you can use a simple point and shoot camera, some nice natural lighting and some basic photography actions to jazz up your photographs.

This morning I took a photo of a ring that I wanted to talk about in my blog post at Sweet Shoppe Designs so I will share my process for taking and editing that photo.

Alrighty…first up…lets talk location.    Where are you going to take your photos?

Like a mentioned I don’t really have an office or studio…I work in our living room.    I have a little wonky Ikea desk (and when I say wonky, I MEAN wonky!   One of the wheels is thiiiiiiiiiis close to coming off.    What can I say…I like to live on the edge lol!), a chair, a small Ikea set of shelves and a wall that houses my corkboard and calender.    

 It just so happens that where I work is right next to a huge window so lots of natural light and with sheer curtains which nicely difuses the light.

My little shelf is right next to this window also.    Once I remove the bits and pieces on top (and probably a nice amount of dust) and I have a nice white background with filtered light which is perfect for taking close up photos.    Good lighting is essential for good photographs.    You don’t want it too bright or you have too much contrast, not enough and you lose detail.

Have you got a little spot near a window that you could use?

 

Now I would like to say that I had some complex way of positioning my ring for the photograph but I just plonked it down on the top of the shelves, adjusted the position until I was happy and took some snaps using my point and shoot camera, a Canon Ixus 100IS (Auto Mode, using no flash).    Easy peasy!     I took 5 five photographs and this is the one that I chose to edit.

Okay so not too bad…but we need to do some tweaking.

Using Photoshop I adjusted the levels.

Before…

 

After…

 

As you can see in this image…I have moved the little pointers in the input level until they are more in line with the hilly black graph.    Play around until you get the result that makes you happy.

 So next step for me is to use an action.     If you love to tweak your own photos from scratch…I’m in awe.    I used to tweak my own photos until I realised that some people know a whole lot more than me when it comes to photo tweaking and have created actions that can create far better results than I ever could…so I hung up my tweaking belt and embraced some actions by Annie Manning at Paint the Moon.     That girl has it totally going on.    The actions that I have used in editing these photos were included in the The Essentials and Miracle Makeover Action Sets

The first action I used was the Super Sharp action which, as the title suggests sharpens the image.

Next up…cropped the photo in nice and tight.     And then used the dodge tool to remove some of the shadows in the right hand side of the photo.

 

Oooooh…getting better…I like where this is going!

And then the final step…lets call it the oomph step.     I applied another action called Brighten and Lighten and kapow!     Brilliant!

All done with a point and shoot camera, natural lighting and some great actions.     Sure it probably is not perfect, and may even need more tweaking but it took me a measley 10 minutes to take the picture and edit.    That is fabulous.     You don’t have to have ALL the latest gadgets or spend a lot of money to create photographs that you love.      Sometimes all you need are a couple of basic things and good lighting to create photos that you will love.

 

What tools do you use when taking and editing photographs?    Share below in the comments.

Happy creating!

Fee x

Tagged as: photography tips, process, scrapbooking tips