I live in a cave. Seriously, I really do. I'm an artist living in a cave. Living in a cave isn't conducive to taking great photos.
I'm also an introvert, as I've mentioned. For me, introvert means that I don't like people watching when I try to do sneaky things like take photos of some cool new bracelets or a piece of 2D art. That means natural lighting is out of the picture. My cave is situated in a highly populated location. There are people everywhere.
I haunt the coloring groups on Facebook, including some groups for artists. One question that comes up often is how to set up to take photos with good lighting or to video on the light side of the moon instead of the dark.
My setup is fairly cheap and I am still working out some of the kinks with the overhead camera dealio. My phone generally records with higher quality than my Logitech c920. I mention that because people think they need a webcam (myself included, which is why I have one that I'm not entirely thrilled with.) My phone is an LG G5 and as long as I keep orientation in mind (step away from the portrait mode...far, far away. Vertical is awful) then I can take great videos and photos.
You need:
- A decent desk or table to photograph on.
- A cheap desk lamp
- A bright white bulb
- Cellphone/Camera holder on a gooseneck, or excessively steady hands and magic.
I don't have an amazing desk. My desk has fallen prey to numerous artistic follies like glitter and glue. I've lost some of the wood-like coating so that photos would like awful if I left it as is. The way around that is to take an extra step and get a black piece of poster board and attach it to your desk with watercolor tape or masking tape. Masking tape is likely to take more finish off and watercolor tape leaves it be.
This is my cheap desk lamp. It cost under $10. The light bulb is just a very bright white bulb (that my guy hates.) I live in a cave with yellow light. Egads.
I shine the light upward to the walls and ceiling so that I do not have direct light on my page. This avoids glare as well as over-saturation. I sometimes require a little post processing, but not much. This is on the cheap.
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This was the test photo I took to show another artist how the images look with this method. I didn't bother putting the image into focus. Oops. You can see, though, that the lighting does its job.
This is a look at the setup I have for video streaming. I do not always use this setup, though I should. I do like the gooseneck camera holder, but it does have a downside. I got it for about $16 on Amazon. The downside is that if you have to attach it to your desk and your desk isn't ungodly still, you have to watch for the wiggles. When we draw, we tend to move the table without meaning to and this does transfer to the holder if you're not careful. You can find this one here, but there are others.
You can see that, while it isn't daylight bright, it's definitely a sufficient alternative to sitting outside on the sidewalk in front of my neighbors trying to snap pics of my most recent creation. I don't even want to go into how hard it would be to video that.
There are many ways to set up an art recording studio. This is definitely an ultra cheap way to get started.