I have had a number of board members write and ask me to share how I take my photos. With their encouragement, I thought I would share some information on my thread. I know I always love to see the “behind the scenes” shots on other peoples dioramas and photos so I hope you will find it useful.

I take most of my photos in a photo tent:

It is basically a nylon cube ( that can be folded up and stored away but I leave mine up as I use it all the time). I use a variety of backdrops – most that are made specifically for the 30 inch photo cube that I use.

Lighting is a key feature in what I do. I use three separate lights that difuse through the nylon photo tent.

The fact that there is defused light really cuts down on shadows. Some people use one big soft box light from the front ( I think this is how Mattel does theirs) but I prefer the flexibility of different light points.

The studio does take up space….

But, for me….I use it almost every day. It is set up in the corner of our bonus/play room so I enjoy being up there when my daughter is practicing her violin or when my son is playing a video game. I have the tent set on two shelves so I can store props that I use for photos.

The other big component of my photography is the processing afterwords or post production. For me, that is photoshop Elements. I try to get most of the componets I want when I actually take the picture but I normally tweek every single photo with photoshop before I post it..even if it is just to resize it to the appropriate dimensions for the various doll boards. I like to whiten backgrounds with photoshop and saturate colors if necessary. Here is a raw photo:

And here is the finished product after photoshop.

Here is an example of what a set up looks like when everything is lit up

I hope you found this information helpful. Feel free to ask questions.

–Rebecca