DIY Macro Photo Studio

Don’t get me wrong–I *love* our new apartment. But it does have this one problem: it faces north, so we get absolutely no natural light in the house, and not even on the balcony. Oddly enough, there are two skylights…in the bathrooms. Why they did not put them, oh, I don’t know, in the kitchen or the living room, I will never know. But suffice it to say that photography here has been a real challenge. I may resort to taking pictures in the bathroom one of these days!

So, given this situation, I was ever more determined to make this easy and cheap little macro photo studio (I often joke with Eric that my 365 project might also be titled “Mostly Macro”!)

Eric sent me the link to the original post from Strobist a few months ago, and I finally got around to making it yesterday. It is awesome!

All you need is a cardboard box no smaller than 12×12 (Mine is 14.5×14.5), some tissue paper, a box cutter, tape, and some poster board. Since we have tons of boxes from moving, this project cost me about…$4.

Here are the steps, as illustrated by the pictures. First cut off the flaps from the top and bottom of the box, leaving the two on the sides for lighting control. Then cut large windows out of three sides of the box.

Tape tissue paper over these windows, and trim a poster board to fit inside the box. Tape it in towards the top of the back wall of your box. Voila!

Then you can position lamps on either side of the box, and on top, if you like, and shoot away! The poster board gives you a nice sweeping background, and you can use any color you like. This handy fellow even made a youtube video showing you how to do it. Enjoy!

Incidentally, these little pumpkins, my first subject, are actually called Wee-B-Little. I thought it was a joke when I saw that on their sticker, but that is the real name of this variety–could it be any cuter?!