Monday, December 30, 2013

The Glory of Proper Lighting

I work retail, so from Thanksgiving to Christmas I'm working non-stop. So while I feel guilty about it, this blog kinda goes into hibernation while I am busy. Sorry, I'll try to make it up in a Christmas Wrap Up post. Maybe. I'll put it in my queue.

But today I want to talk about the Magic of Proper Lighting. Many bloggers have talked about making sure you have good lighting, but I was fairly restricted in just what I could do. I didn't have a light box, and all the ones I made were disasters. So I just stuck with natural lighting (in winter you don't have many hours to get the manis done and photographed and it's just cold.) or dealt with the lighting in my room. I tried to fix the photos before posting them, but I never got real good with that.

Picture taken in my room with current lighting and no
fixing on computer.

That was until I got an Ott Light for Christmas! Well, to be really honest, I didn't so much "get it for Christmas" and more "found out Dad wasn't using his so I stole it from his office". Shush, don't tell. Here is a pic using that lamp.


The color is so much better, but that glare in the middle is bad. On nails it might not be so terrible, but on this nail polish pendant, it makes it so you can't see the design at all. A light box would fix that, but I've yet to make a light bow that works for me. So what I need is a light diffuser of some sort. So I took a sheer white shirt and tied it over the end of the lamp so the light shines thru the shirt. The light is softer, but still bright and white. I should take a moment and say this is dangerous and that you shouldn't do it. The shirt can get hot and catch fire. I did it because I ignore common sense. Anyway, here is my results of that:


The detail is so much better, but it changed the color a bit. It's kinda greenish and I don't care for it. I prolly won't do it for mani pics, but I had to get rid of the glare for my other nail polish projects. So while it's not amazing yet, it's better than the regular light in my room and crazy better than my photography skills a few years ago.

Photo taken Dec 2011. I thought I was hot stuff back then.

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