A homemade lightbox

Yesterday I made a rather crude light box out of pizza boxes and parchment paper.  Before I make something a bit larger, I wanted to experiment with some lighting affects, and my homemade light box was just what I needed to convince myself that a little additional, and controlled lighting, is a good thing.  I will address the issue of true back-drop color later, but for now, the results of my test.

First up, the egg.

No lights - this shows a truer color of the poster board.

Lit from both the right and the left.

Lit only from the right.

The egg was an interesting test subject, I thought.  White is not easy to photograph, and I'm still learning about that, but it was interesting to see how the white shell of the egg didn't photograph particularly 'white'.  None the less, I was pleased with the reduction in shadows when the lights were lit from both the right and the left.

Next up, a small tin of powder.

Lit from the right only.

Lit from both the right and the left.

Now my tin of powder with a back-drop change.  I used poster board for my back-drops.  In the above shots, I used a powder blue sheet of poster board.  In the following shots I used black.  I loved how the black played out. I found it fascinating to see just how much the lights affected the color of my powder blue poster board.

Lit from the right and the left, with black poster board as a back-drop.

Lit from the left only.

Lit from both the right and the left.

I had a lot of fun with my crude little light box, I loved seeing how the lights played a role in the various results I achieved.  It wasn't just the lights, it was the kind of light, the direction and the proximity.  In all the photos I can see that I need a lighting solution from both the front and from above, but it was still a fun exercise.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and learned a bit more about lighting, diffusing light, light direction, the affect of light on color, etc.