Level: Advanced

Photography is all about lighting. Literally translated, it means "painting with light". Having the right light can make or break your photo's composition. So, how do you go about achieving this without breaking the bank? In this lesson we'll go over how to create your own studio on a shoestring budget and still achieve professional results.

You'll need a suitable area to take photographs. If you have a room you don't use or if you can con your roommate into letting you use the garage, you're set. You'll require a good chunk of empty space for adequate setup. The amount of space between your camera and the subject will vary depending on what you want to photograph. For instance, when photographing people ideally you'll want about five feet of space between your subject and the background, (the distance will allow use depth of field to make the background blur a bit while keeping the subject sharply in focus.) If you want to take macro photos of coins, stamps or other tiny objects, you'll obviously need much less room.

The first thing we'll talk about is the ever popular, and sometimes trendy, isolated object on white background. You see people trying to do this all the time that aren't quite so successful. When done well, it is very eye-catching and, as I'm sure any designer can tell you, very handy to place into projects.


A search on iStock for "isolated" brings up thousands of photos, some AMAZINGLY well done, while others were a little lacking. (I'm having a lot of fun going through iStock and finding examples to highlight in this lesson to illustrate my points.) I have to say, however, I'm going to tell you the photographic way to make these kinds of images. For all I know, the people that made these images are photo editing software gurus who took these pictures in a pile of trash and then went in and isolated them with a post-editing program. If you've got the right equipment, it's easier, (in my opinion), to just take the photo the way you want it in the first place - so no matter how these images were originally taken, I'll tell you how to achieve the same effects with your camera.

It's important to understand what "white" is in a photograph. (Trust me, I know how stupid that sounds, but hang in there with me.) If you set your camera on its "auto" settings and go out and take a picture of a field of snow, you might be surprised that you don't get a white picture back. In fact, you'll probably be unable to find a spot of white anywhere in the picture. This is because your camera's metering system is thinking for you. Generally, metering systems take a bunch of spots in the photo, jumble them up and expose that jumble so that it comes out as something called "middle gray".

Just as an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at the following shots. They were both taken using the same light and same aperture, and I told the camera to calculate the exposure for me by varying the shutter speed. One was taken of a black piece of poster board and one was taken of a white piece of poster board. I removed all of the color information from the shots, leaving them as simple grayscale, to make for easier comparison.

See if you can tell me which one is taken of white paper and which one is black paper.



I encourage everyone reading this to try this themselves. It's bizarre when you know you were just staring at white and black pieces of paper and the pictures come out looking identical. It will definitely leave an impression on you.

"So how do you make it white? Simple. You expose your photo correctly..."

The reason I'm showing you this is because when you place an object on a simple white background, the camera will try and turn your white background into a shade similar to above. So how do you make it white? Simple. You expose your photo correctly for your subject, and then you flood your background with light to actually overexpose the background, making it pure white.

The easiest way to do this is to place your subject on a white translucent background that is lit from behind. Then set up your lights and exposure, and you've got yourself a subject floating in midair! These translucent kits are available for commercial photographers for fairly reasonable prices, (and occasionally quite cheap from online auctions.) Your local glass store may be able to hook you up with a piece of white translucent plexiglass curved at about a 90 degree angle for even a more reasonable rate. There are also commercial "light tents" made of white fabric that you simply place your subject in to light the whole thing up and - whammo! You've got yourself a seamless white background.

For larger objects, such as people, if you don't have the ability to place them on a huge piece of backlit glass, use any kind of white background, (be sure it's clean and to iron out any wrinkles), and place strong background lights alongside of your subject out of the camera's view, like this:



The "key light" is what a photographer's main light is called, and it should be the normal light setup that you would use for your subject. Using this technique will give you the following effect, as long as your background lights are bright enough and the light distribution is even. For top notch results, there's no out-doing the use of a light meter.



Another technique for isolation is by using what's referred to as a "seamless background". For photographing small objects in still life photography an easy and inexpensive way to do this is by using plain old poster board. It tends to work better than fabric because there are no textures to worry about dealing with, and one side is shiny while the other is matte, meaning you can control how much light you want bouncing around off of your background.

This is a side view of what I'm taking about:



Now, in order to make that background really white without overexposing your subject, you want to flood the whole area with a lot of really soft light. The best way to do it is by lighting with "softboxes". A softbox is a lighting instrument that gives off a very diffused light, keeping shadows to a bare minimum.

You can either buy softboxes from a photography supply store or you can make your own with very little effort. I made mine years ago and still use them often today as a full time commercial photographer. I'll share my instructions with you so you can make your own.

You'll want to start at the hardware store. Buy some of those clip-on work lights, they're really cheap - like five or ten bucks. (That's US dollars I'm referring to.) About 250W lights will be perfect. Buy one light for each softbox you want to make.

Okay, now buy a piece of white foamcore board for each clip-on light. It's sort of like poster board, but the middle is stuffed full of a styrofoam-like substance. You can also get it at art supply or office supply stores.



You want a large piece, 8 feet by 4 feet. (You metric system people are going to have to adapt for this one.) If you can't find one that large, two pieces that you can cut into 4 foot by 4 foot will work fine. You can also make these half-size by using 4 feet by 2 feet sheets of foamcore. Very handy for smaller tabletop photography projects. If you choose to make the smaller ones, just cut all of the following measurements in half. Smaller ones are also great if you don't have a huge amount of room to work with.

Draw dividing line into four 2-foot sections. Then make marks where all the circles are indicated in the diagram. They're 18 inches in from the outside of the foamcore. Now play connect-the-dots by drawing in all of the other lines that are noted on the diagram. Then use a razor blade or X-acto knife to cut the foamcore along these lines.

Now its time to put it together. You'll need duct tape, packing tape or some other kind of wide, heavy-duty tape. Once the pieces, (x to z), have been matched up, you'll produce a pyramid.



Take the one I called a "light piece" and cut a hole in the middle of it large enough that your light's neck, clip/handle and cord will fit through. You don't want the hot sides of the lamp to touch your foamcore, so the hole should be thin. Measure both the clip and the plastic neck of the lamp and make this hole just big enough that it fits through without the metal part of the lamp touching it. It will depend on the measurements of your lamp, the lamp shown here is about two inches by five inches. This piece will get taped inside of the small hole, as you can see in the pictures.



Now, you can choose what you'd like to cover the large opening that will diffuse the light. This is referred to in the lighting side of photography as a "scrim". A piece of white bed sheet will work fine - kids bedding is best as you can get it in heat-resistant fabric. (You can also go to the fabric store for a variety of selection.) The thicker the material, the more diffused your light will be. If you plan on always using the same cover, you can just cut the fabric to fit and tape it over the large hole. If you think you might want to change it, you can either sew elastic around the edges so it fits over the hole like a shower cap or use clips to hold it on. (I'd go for the shower cap idea, personally.) Besides diffusing your light this way, you can also get sheer colored fabrics that will actually color your light for interesting effects you can experiment with later. I know I mentioned the idea of heat-resistant fabric, make SURE that is what you use, and don't leave your lights on unattended. I don't want anybody starting any fires.

Okay! Now you just need to find stands for your lights and you're ready to go. One for each light, depending on how many lights you've decided you want. You can either buy them from a photographic supply store, OR since we're being super-creative and frugal here, you can opt for other choices. Since the lights we bought have those fantastic, sturdy clips, they'll clip to darn near anything and stay put fairly well. If you have ladders, stools or chairs, they'll all make good or at least makeshift stands. I want to emphasize that you want to make sure whatever you use is very sturdy.

If you place your softboxes one at a time so they are lighting your subject, every time you turn one on, look and see where the shadows are. Then place another softbox so that it's filling light into that area. By doing this and playing with your exposure, you'll be able to make an image like the strawberry photo above, fairly easily. If you're using auto exposure on your camera, you may need to set your camera to actually "overexpose" by one to two stops - this will make sure that the white is truly "white". As long as you are using soft lights, your subject won't have harsh, overexposed highlights.

By using these techniques, you'll quickly master the ever-so-professional-looking white background!


Photo Credits:
bamboo close up / absolutly_frenchy
iso - strawberry / nickobec
Hand (Great) / Ravet007