Today’s post is only tangentially food-related. If, like me, you live in a northern climate, you probably find, especially in winter, that a lot of your cooking is done after dark (since dark happens at 4pm). Photographing food is a challenge at the best of times, let alone in unnatural light.

Since I started blogging, I’ve tried several workarounds. The first was a flash…Don’t. Even. Bother. Flashes make food look like it’s made of plastic. So then I tried a wide aperture combined with some post processing…great, if your food is two-dimensional, otherwise, only half your pasta bowl will be in focus (a side-effect of wide apertures). Most recently, I had started photographing my food in the bathroom. This did not seem like a very viable option, and in truth, I was tired of having my artistic options limited by the lighting (or lack thereof).

I was just about to shell out for a couple of these when I came upon this most useful post, which explains how to go about building a lightbox using nothing more than a few desklamps, some fabric, and a large cardboard box.

Having just moved, the box was easy to find. For everything else, I visited my two most trustworthy “project” stores: Dollarama (tape and cheap white pillowcases) and Canadian Tire (light bulbs, an extension cord, and 2 clip-on desk lamps at $7.99 each). Overall, the project only took half a day to build (from start to finish), and although I’ve yet to really test it out, it did seem to work pretty well in the few shots I snapped.

Much, much better than paying $90.00 a pop for studio lighting.

This shot makes me think of Pixar….

Playing around with the lightbox using grapefruits as subjects