Homemade Product Photography Setup

An inexpensive way to create your own photography studio for the classroom. I used this for product photography with my students. There is also a great YouTube video from prophotolife that I discovered that walks you through the process of setting up the homemade studio. I used this video to introduce the lesson because he uses great vocabulary and it is easy to follow and see the effects that lighting can have on an object.

Materials:

• 2 Pan lights with high watt bulbs
• Diffuser made from white sheet, acetate, or similar material hot glued to a frame
• Piece of white foam core or anything white and glossy to reflect light
• White Backdrop: white sheet, large piece of white matte board

The Setup:

The Results:

(These photos are straight from the camera, unedited)

Glamour Shots, Zombies, and Aging Portraits

This is a project I taught during my student teaching. It utilized a lot of the tools in Photoshop that are adaptable to any project or photograph. This project went over very well, and they especially enjoyed turning themselves into zombies. The students started by taking their own portraits making sure to have no major facial expression and that they were straight forward. This would make the transformations go much more smooth.

Glamour Shots

The first version the students worked on was the Glamour Shots. The tools and techniques used in this version included:

• Layer masking
• Making Selections
• Layers and Adjustment Layers
• Blending Modes
• Filter>Noise>Median to apply a soft skin layer typically used in portrait editing

 

Zombie-fying

The second version the students worked on was the Zombie transformation. The tools and techniques used in this version included:

• Layer masking
• Making Selections
• Layers and Adjustment Layers
• Blending Modes
• Color Balance to match peeled paint textures to apply to grunge skin textures

Aging Portraits

The final version the students worked on was aging themselves. The tools and techniques used in this version included:

• Layer masking
• Making Selections
• Layer and Adjustment Layers
• Blending Modes
• Patch Tool and Opacity to apply wrinkles
• Liquify to accentuate facial features

Lesson: Grids and Guides

Overview:

This project introduces students to the grids and guides in Photoshop. They selected one subject matter to photograph from multiple angles ending up with between 10-15 photos to use for the grid project. The students composed a blank document in Photoshop and applied their own grid composition to it using the Guides and Rulers. They used the Rectangular Marquee Tool and the Layer Mask to put their photographs into their grids that they designed.

Photoshop Skills:

• Guides and Rulers
• Multiple Layers
• Rectangular Marquee Tool
• Adding Layer Masks
• Transforming and Scaling

Design Concepts:

• Cropping and Composition
• Variation in size
• Balance, Color, & Unity
• Hierarchy
• Margins and Columns
• Intro to Layout Design 

Lesson: Typography as a Composition

Overview:

This project introduced students to typography and thinking of typography as a design element rather than as a literary element. The students used Photoshop and placed each letter of their name on a separate layer to enable transforming and rotating each character separately.

Content Focus:

• Use the characters of your name to develop a unified composition.

Photoshop Skills:

• Type Tool
• Layers
• Blending Modes
• Character Panel for Type
• Rotating and Scaling
• Font exploration and experimentation

Design Concepts:

• Cropping and Composition
• Unity
• Balance
• Positive/Negative Space
• Line and Movement
• Size/Scale