photographing for web postings

An easy way to photograph products, for sale or for fun, while using natural light and no flash. I used three pieces of white board (even cardboard with white paper taped or glued to it would work), two square and one rectangular with a taped hinge between. I use regular white paper as a surface.

I position the reflector, because that is what it becomes, on a table right next to a big window with indirect light (no direct sunlight) but not too dark.Then I photograph from straight above, for my sister's tea samples, or from whatever makes the best composition without blocking the light. I position the side flaps to bounce the most light to the sides of the objects as well.

Then I use photoshop to edit the images. First I use the white balance and select the whitest part of the paper background as pure white. The camera's light meter automatically underexposes white as it interprets medium grey. Then I use the selection tool to select the white background from the edges of the tea, reverse selection to only crop out the tea (feather if necessary, to avoid sharp selection edges), open new image, copy paste the tea into it, click away the standard white background layer, save as a gif to allow transparancy and voila, a tea picture with a transparent background - suitable for all websites :)

Fenn Fresh - a original tea melange by Atelier Cherubijn.