One of the difficult conditions in my apartment is a lack of decent lighting to photograph much of anything very well. Earlier this week I went ahead and made myself a little mini photography studio for shooting models in a clean, neutral environment.

While you can buy similar professional “Photo Cubes” with fine mesh fabric sides that are nicely collapsible and portable, this version is about as cheap as you can get – an old cardboard box for the structure with the top and sides cut out and covered with translucent white tissue paper to let in light and diffuse it. The backdrop is a piece of white posterboard cut to fit the width of the box and loosely inserted. This can easily be swapped out for other darker colours if desired.

I’m still playing around with lighting and camera settings for the best results – this is a new setup for me and I’m no professional – but it’s looking like it should work out so far. Here’s a couple of the best results from doing some experimenting this evening:

(Just ignore for now that the strapping and final details on this load haven’t been completed yet, I just wanted to experiment with something.)