Unify Photo Shoot—behind the scenes

Hi everyone! It’s Monday once again and today I’d love to share a behind the scenes look at how I go about prepping for a photo shoot. I always strive to take beautiful pictures of new items I've created for my shop; namely, because great item pictures are like first impressions when it comes to selling on the web. This year one of my goals is to always take great pictures for my shop and I’d like to show you how I make my settings looks like a million bucks but at cost of someone on a budget—like myself.

Firstly, I’m doing this whole photo shoot for new wedding theme cupcake toppers I made. So I needed cupcakes; and, I really enjoy making them myself. It always feels wrong to go to the market buy a cupcake, stick one of my cupcake toppers in it, and claim it as my own—I’m just weird that way. I tried it once and just threw it away because you could kind of tell I didn't make it, haha. So for this session I just went over to my local dollar store and bought a box cake mix—which is PERFECT because it only makes 12. Next I used a piping bag, and jumbo piping tips—you can find some here.

Next I referred to my trust icing color chart and choose the color: Rose water. It’s so pretty and sweet. The icing color chart can be found inside the awesome pages of the Food Network Magazine, 2012 May issue, Volume 5, Number 4. You can download the issue by clicking here (not too sure if it’s free).

Next I added some pretty pearls and the cupcakes were ready for their close up! 

The behind the scenes star of this shoot was going to be these awesome lights I purchased from Walmart. I was so obsessed, this year, with taking pictures of things in front of my Christmas tree—because of the blurred light effect—so I thought I’d try to recreate that effect for this shoot. You can find them at Walmart, in the wedding section for under $6.00.

After I set up the lights were I wanted them, I grabbed any ol’ mini table I could find and I placed a piece of 12 x 12 pattern paper over it to cover the unwanted design. 

I placed that mini table a few feet away from the lights in order to create more depth of field. Once the cupcake toppers were inserted I was ready to shoot and here are the results!

What do you think? I also used natural lighting because I don’t have a flash (nor do I like using it) but when I noticed I was starting to get some shadow I simply fixed that by placing a white board near the side of the cupcakes that were producing an ugly shadow. It worked out ok :-p

I was pretty happy with the over results. It was super fun for me and it was super easy on my wallet. I love that taking pretty pictures doesn't have to cost much. Have a great day!