An important part of selling hand-made products is quality photography. When we began our online store, we had to make do with whatever we had available. Since lighting in our apartment is not the greatest, I had a goal to obtain a photo lightbox. I had no idea what brand to purchase or how we would add a photo lightbox to our photographic equipment, but the goal had been set
It took a while before we were able to finally obtain a professional photo lightbox. After doing so I began to discover that some of the details related to photographic lightboxes can be built up yourself. Oh well, you learn as you go. Since we do not have the appropriate lighting or space to set up our own home-made lightbox, a professional one was still on the cards.
Thanks to a very kind Patron, our goal became a reality. Off we set to a photographic store to obtain assistance in purchasing our lightbox.
In the video below, you can see a little description as to why I wanted this addition to our equipment. The video then moves on to some unboxing, a little of the assembling and a few thoughts of my experience in putting together a Godox lightbox for the first time.
I learned a lot just filming this video. for example, who would have guessed that if you can’t read a manual, put it through a video and you might see the tiny images more clearly? That was an interesting discovery! We also made a little mistake with the position of the fabric that acts as a diffusor. We had to call the photographic store that we purchased the lightbox from to ask for some advice. It did require redoing a section of the assembly, but this has definitely been a fun and appreciated addition to our photographic equipment.
One challenge came when looking at a few photographs taken in our kitchen and comparing them to photos of products taken in the lightbox. Some details were hard to find a significant difference. I do think on the whole, that the photographs we now take using the lightbox are more effective than not using the lightbox. I still have much to learn and look forward to what is in store as we strive to provide quality product photographs.
In keeping with the theme of this blog, which relates to our creative gifts, if you are looking for a gift to give to someone who loves photography and is considering starting an online store, consider giving them a photographic lightbox. Of course you will need to know details e.g. budget, size of products to be photographed, size of space available to place the lightbox. If you are stuck, perhaps talk to the person who are considering giving a gift to. You can always give them a card with a note inside that mentions your desire to give them a lightbox, that way they will receive a surprise for the gift and can then become part of the process of selecting the perfect lightbox or other piece of photographic equipment to suit their needs.