My wife loves gadgets. In fact, she is the first woman I ever met who has more toys than I do! When we first started dating, I was truly amazed (and impressed) by her collection of kitchen tools and accessories. She says she got this trait from her father, who loved gadgetry also. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I bet we would have had a lot to talk about.
So when she recently told me she was going to get us a photo tent, I was not at all surprised. We take a lot of photos of “stuff”, and it’s hard to get good lighting inside. Sometimes it’s even hard to find a suitable, uncluttered surface to get a decent shot, therefore the tent made perfect sense. Of course she was happy because it meant another GADGET!
Being a strictly amateur photographer, I’ve never used anything like this before. My wife was a little surprised that the thing didn’t come with any instructions, but I guess that the pros who typically buy it wouldn’t need any. The tent itself sort of resembles a cat cubey-thing we have, which means we should not let the cats anywhere near it.
Michelle, who has a cooking and baking blog over at Big Black Dog, recommended the tent to my wife. She has some truly stunning photos over there, so I value her opinion. The tent we got is a 30″ cube, and here is what it looks like from the outside. It came with two light fixtures on tripods.
Photo Tent
I took a few experimental photos, and I can see how it’s going to improve our photography here at Happy Acres. It came with white and black backgrounds but I think we’ll have to get some additional material, perhaps some black or colored velvet. This Echeveria looks nice against the white background.
Echeveria shaviana cv. ‘Pinky’
I tried a few shots on the black background, both plants and some food. Being mid-morning I wasn’t in the middle of cooking anything, so I staged a little shot of some granola I made recently. I think the plant worked better on black than the granola did.
Stapelia variagata
Cranberry-Almond Granola
Here is one last photo, again on the black background. This is one of the more unusual Sansevieria’s in my small collection.
Sansevieria cylindrica
Wow. Your ‘test’ photos are amazing. I look forward to seeing more in the future. It is nice that your wife likes gadgets as much as you do 🙂
Thanks Noelle. Yes, my wife and I are dangerous when shopping together. She’s a Master Gardener too so we are NOT allowed to go to nurseries together unless we take the truck to haul home our purchases. 🙂
Nice shots. I had one of those things once and it was always bending and awkward. It is good to see that you are having better luck than I did. Enjoy your new GADGET.
Well Joel, so far so good with the tent. One of the biggest problems I can see will be keeping the backgrounds clean. Of course, putting plants in there means getting all kinds of soil, dust, etc on them. I can see having one setup for food and another for plants, although the foods could wind up as messy as the plant material. We will see. Thanks for stopping in!