package design

January 16th Lunar / Solar Creative hosted a workshop for photographing pieces for your portfolio. Here is a quick and dirty outline of what we went over.

1. Have plenty of space to work, and be able to control any outside light coming in through windows.

2. You will need a table, a seamless background, some clamp-able work lights with daylight balanced bulbs, a tripod, and a bed sheet.

3. Use a camera with manual mode. (Learn how to use manual mode) shoot in RAW.

4. Set your backdrop up higher than you think you need to, you don’t want to be fighting with it later when you are framing your shots.

5. When you’re shooting set your ISO low (To avoid noise) and set your aperture between F/5.6 and F/8. Adjust your shutter speed with the light meter, and use your cameras self timer feature so you won’t be moving your camera when you take the photo.

6. Look at your photos closely, see where your highlights and reflections are and make any adjustments with your lights. You can use a white sheet of paper to bounce light onto your objects as well.

7. Take your images into Photoshop or Lightroom to make any adjustments, or clean up any blemishes. (Save editing time by cleaning up your objects beforehand with a cloth or compressed air)