...my very own light box!

One of the serious bummers about living in a topsy-turvey upside-downy house, which is partly built into the side of a hill and partly built immediately next to a public footpath, is the fact that we get quite a limited supply of natural light. I try to avoid fully opening the blinds at the front of the house for fear of inviting a constant stream of passing glances into my living room from the footpath (its very difficult not to have a sneaky look when you're walking directly in front of someone's home - I do the same myself!) and the light tends to be rubbish from the other side of the house at the times when I am at my most productive! This is not good for taking nice bright pictures of ones creations.

So, up until now, I have been utilising the only naturally bright area in the whole house for photographing my projects - the windowsill in my bedroom. If taken at the right time of day, I found the results could be quite successful, if a bit limited (it was becoming very difficult not to capture the barbed wire fence from our nearby Equestrian Centre in the background to my photos, for example....). However, since I am a full-time working girl, and cannot always guarantee that I will be home in good time to utilise my half hour window of natural sunlight, I decided to look into buying/making my very own light box in which endless brightly-coloured photographs could be taken at all hours of the day and night, whatever the season!

After a very brief bout of internet research, I stumbled upon this very helpful tutorial which provides clear and concise instructions on how to build your own light box from a simple, and easily-sourced, range of materials. And I am very pleased to say that the results are most excellent!

The photos in this post were taken in the light box at 10pm on a winters night and I think, in the circumstances, they look pretty impressive. Since taking these pictures, I have increased my lamp collection threefold, which should hopefully increase the brightness infinitely - but, even with just the one lamp, I am really quite pleased with how they look.

If anyone has any additional tips for photographing work, especially small projects like these, I'd love to hear them!

Kat

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