This is how our guest room typically looks and this is a little peak into how I do my photographs for this blog. I intend to add a static page about my photos but hopefully this post will answer some of your questions in the meantime. So my husband, Stefan, is a pretty good amateur photographer. He is a gadget guy and doesn’t really do anything half way so we have a lot of camera equipment. A LOT. One thing we have is seamless background paper and studio lights. Before we got dining room furniture we only had two gigantic rolls of the paper — one black and one white — for Stefan to use for people portraits. Once the dining room ceased being a studio and became a dining room we didn’t have room to keep the big rolls up all the time. So we bought a small roll — 53″ wide — of white paper and a tiny roll — 26″ wide — of black for crafty photos and photos of one kid, sitting down in the case of the white.
We set the background stand up in the guest room and unroll the paper onto the bed. We leave a small piece of MDF on the bed to support whatever we’re photographing. The light on the left is set up as a normal flash and the light on the right is set up as a soft box — a recent addition. I know very little about the technical aspects of photography so I pretty much leave everything set up the way Stefan left it and go from there. Mostly we use a Canon EOS 10D but we also have a Canon PowerShot SD200 that we use more for snapshots. So there’s a little corner that I usually don’t show anyone — at least not when it looks like that.
wow…you’ve just intimidated me a little bit
my husband is the same way, he is a gadget guy and doesn’t do anything half way….so I do understand that perfectly.
it’s nice to see how you shoot your photos for your blog…they always look great.
You know I love your photos (both of yours), so seeing this behind the scenes stuff fascinates me!
Very interesting!
I used to work in a photo studio and man, do I wish I could afford studio lighting! Lucky duckling!
neat! i always wondered how your photographs came out all perfect
now i wish too that i could do this! hehe, thanks for sharing 
I highly recommend perusing strobist ( http://strobist.blogspot.com/ ) While definitely on the technical side, he does some amazing ( http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/01/on-assignment-book-club.html ) off camera lighting with cheap and/or home made equipment.
Sarah: We use Alien Bees ( http://alienbees.com ) at $360 for the beginner bee package you get everything you need out of high-end lights like photogenic at 1/3 the cost. Still not cheap and you don’t get things like digital power levels. Up until a few weeks ago the beginner package and one light was all we had and we were able to get some great shots.
We have been long been cannon users (4 so far) and I primarily use the SD600. I have a hankering for a digital SLR and was considering a nikon D40. How do you like the cannon slr?
Sonya: The thing is, both nikon and canon make good SLRs for every budget, but there are some gems in the bunch.
My mom has a D50 and for the price it is a nice camera, but if it was me I would spend the extra money for the DReb XTi. You get a much more rich feature set in a cheap plastic camera. Couple it with the 28-135IS and you will be very happy for a while. If price is critical get the d40, if you want a camera you can grow into get the XTi.
If you want the best first SLR/lens pair on the market right now, get the D200 with the 18-200VR. This is a great setup and will keep an aspiring photographer happy for a long while.
This is all caveated with the fact that this is the time of year when new cameras are released so things may change in the next 30 days.
ooohh… so that’s how you do it! amazing