For the Record: Quick Photography with Natural Light

I recently made a set of pendants for an upcoming gallery show and wanted to take some quick photos of my work for my personal records. I didn't want to set up my whole photography setup so I grabbed my point and shoot camera and a large white envelope that was sitting on my desk and proceeded to start taking photos.

My studio window...nice and big! Look at all of that natural light!
I love my huge studio window, but for photographs in the middle of the day it was just too much light to take effective photos. To correct this, I closed my blinds and used that white envelope to create a quick mini studio:



With the above setup, I took this photo:

 
Yikes. To cut that awful glare down a bit I adjusted the paper like this:


Which produced this photo:

Much better! Notice the upper left area of the pendant - see that light gray area? That's the reflection of the paper in the silver. This is a great trick to try when shooting shiny things too.

A little bit of adjusting and moving the paper around while looking at my camera's screen to watch how the light changed with each movement allowed me to cut down even more of the glare to take this photo of one of the other pieces:

"untitled" - lampwork glass bead by Beth Knapp Tyner
pendant design and fabrication by Marlo Miyashiro


I love the result. What do you think?

Bouncing light off of a white surface softens the light but keeps it brighter than filtering light through translucent material. Give this white paper trick a try the next time you're sitting at your desk next to a window. You might be surprised with the results!


4 Response to "For the Record: Quick Photography with Natural Light"

Black Coral said...

So smart & easy. Thank you!!

IMakeCuteStuff (aka Marlo M.) said...

Thanks Black Coral! It is amazing how simple it can be sometimes :)

Laura K. Aiken said...

Great idea Marlo!...got your link from Etsy in today's email. Glad I did.
laura.

IMakeCuteStuff (aka Marlo M.) said...

Hi Laura! Thanks so much for you kind comment. So glad you found me! There will be more posts soon...stay tuned! :)

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