Well, it’s been a little over two months since I started photographing what I cook, and while I still find it challenging and not-so-easy to do, I’m still having fun with it while I try to improve.
We just made some changes to our little DIY studio. The biggest change is that our studio no longer sits on our bar counter top. There were two reasons I was having problems with that. One issue has been that’s it’s difficult for me to take pictures of food in the various stages of preparation because my prep area and the studio location is the bar counter top. There’s no room for the studio to be set up if I’m prepping food on the counter top.
I’ve done it, but it’s very hard because when the studio occupies the entire breakfast bar counter top, it means that I have only a very small counter top space next to my sink to prep food. That makes cooking very awkward.
The other reason I was having problems with the studio box being on the counter top is because it sits up very high, making it difficult when I want to take pictures from high angles.
So what we did to solve both problems was to purchase two TV trays which we place side-by-side below the breakfast bar. We just move the bar stools out of the way and put the TV trays in their place. Here’s a picture so you can see our new set-up:
We also added a fifth, overhead light which clamps onto our breakfast bar counter top. The extra light helps a lot. Now we can have two front lights, as well as a light on the right and left sides of the box. If we don’t want two frontal lights, we can move one to the side.
Another change we made was to buy a piece of white fabric to use as our seamless background. Today was our first day to use it, and I think it’s going to work better than the roll of paper we had been using. Later, we will purchase some fabric in various solid colors so we can change up the background.
Kemal also cut a hole in the back of the studio box. If we want, we can light from the back. If we don’t need a back light, we just attach a piece of white foam board to cover the hole. We use Velcro so we can take the board on and off easily. We also use Velcro to attach the fabric to the box, and Velcro is also used to attach the corners of the box. That makes it easy to collapse and fold the box when we’re read to put it away and store it under our bed. The TV trays also fold up and occupy just a little place in our closets which is also nice since our apartment is so small.
We made some test shots, and I’m definitely satisfied. 
