- what i do a lot oftimes between projects, is i photograph the previous one. and i have since added somereally cool backdrop stuff to my shop, and i get a lot of questions about how i photograph my work.
wood projects youtube, i've got a couple examples to show you, i'm gonna actually showyou my set up over here so you can see what i actually do, and this is new to me,this is the first time
i was able to do this. i just added that to theshop about six months ago. so, what i've done, is i installed some photographic backdrops. these are paper backdrops,and you can see we have three rolls up there,which i have to be honest, is overkill, but having neverreally done this before, i wasn't sure what backgroundwould work the best for me, so i got a white, i got a darkgray, and then i got a beige.
it's actually a really cool system. if you look over here, i've got these chain-driven"thingy-ma-bobbers." that's actually what they're called.- [voiceover] pulleys. - yeah, sorta, pulley-thingies. and this will actually allow me to retract and pull-down the paper. the great thing about thisis, you put the backdrop down,
doesn't matter what's behind it, it covers pretty much everything. you put your project,obviously the bigger it is, the harder it is to do this, but most of the stuff i build will fit within the confines of this size. put your subject here, andof course you need lighting. this is good, but you doneed supplemental lighting to make this work.
just those little compactfluorescent deals. alright? and i shine those... here's the thing. if you want to get intophotographic lighting, there's a lot of greatresources out there, and you can find out about your basic three-point lighting techniques. if i had the skill and ability and time,
i probably would lookinto that type of thing, i know about it, i just don't practice it. i find that two decent lightswill give me good results. the key is, i just want results that look professional enough. i'm not trying to compete with the professional photographer, here, i just want it to look decent. so, i have my two lights,casting light in both directions,
create some nice shadows, and we get really good results with this. i also have larger boxedlights, light boxes, that will cast a huge amountof light on the scene. sometimes it's overkill forthis, sometimes it's just right, you can dial them down a little,but they're big and bulky, so i don't keep them in the shop. so this set-up works really well for me. the camera i use is a canon 60d.
it's a really good camera,especially for someone like me, who isn't really allthat into photography, but i bought this when i wrote the book. i needed quality photos at alevel that i didn't currently have the ability to take, sothis was a good compromise, and has turned out to be areally good camera for me, and that's what i take my shots with. i'm going to show you some pictures that i took with my iphone,and because of this set-up,
they're really darn good. it's kind of showing you that you don't necessarily have toinvest a thousand dollars into a camera if you'vealready got one on your phone and your lighting situation is just right. each one of those chaindrives is 38 dollars. so, if you can find a way,even if you buy the brackets, the brackets themselves are 30 dollars. you don't have to have allthree of them populated,
or, you could just gofind, look at them online and make something of your own, it probably isn't too difficult. but, 30 bucks for the hooks, 38 dollars for one of the drives, and then your paper roll,depending on what you get. mine was about 65 dollars, so it's not that bad of aninvestment if it's something you're going to use on every project.
it makes your work look like it's been professionally photographed. this is the recent garyrowgowski jewelry box project. all that was done, isthe setup you just saw. i laid the jewelry box onthe ground toward the back, and took a picture with my canon camera. and i don't even know a wholelot about custom settings. a little bit of knowledgeabout using custom settings for your camera will go a long way,
so you can get your focus right, you can stop using theflash, things like that. you can get really good results,but this is an un-doctored photo right off thecamera using that setup. this is the moorish chair project, just recently completed. that one is doctored. and this is really the secretto a lot of my pictures. when i can't get perfect lighting,
like right off the camera, i have help. my good buddy, funk, john funk, does some great photoshopwork, his wife does as well. one of them, i don't knowwho actually does it, but they do a lot ofpost-work on these pictures. here is the same shot, pre-photoshop. so all he did was removesome of the shadow lines, brighten things up, and also, you notice, i've got a little bit ofbackground on that shot.
look to the left and to theright, where you could see to the outside extremities of the paper. this actually - let me go back to the photoshop version. boom. cleans it up real nice, andlike i said, good enough. i'm not looking for absolute,you know, "this is going "to stand up to the bestphotographers out there." i don't need that.
this is good enough forme to post on facebook, and for people to go, "ooh, ahh," which is actually myultimate goal in life. here's a shot, same set-up,with my moorish chair, using my iphone. that doesn't look too bad, does it? and that's un-doctored, by the way. that was just for test purposes. i wanted to take apicture to prove a point,
specifically for this, to show you what it looks like, using - and not that the iphone has a bad camera, the iphone has a very goodcamera, but it's something that's along for theride with my smart phone, as opposed to an 800, 900 dollar camera that i invested in for the purposes of taking pictures for a book. you don't necessarily haveto go through all this stuff,
but if you want to, there's agreat resource for lighting, and i use it for all my lighting needs, because it's incredible budget friendly. steve kaeser lighting. i believe the guy is locatedin southern california, and i will put the link directly to his site in the show notes. great lighting kits, great prices on big, soft boxes, light boxes,
and little photographic kits like this. you can even get those littletents that sort of open up, and it's a light box thatyou can shine the light in and take pictures ofsmaller items like that.