Scout Your House Part 3

This is the third in a series discussing how to evaluate and set up locations within your home to work as photography backdrops.  In the first post, I covered some less-obvious locations, and last week I showed a couple spots in each of the girls’ bedrooms.

Today I want to show how I set up for the Tiny Sewists series.  If you haven’t read any of these posts, they are a series where I share my lessons for teaching Arden, my four (now five) year-old daughter how to sew.  She has her very own sewing machine, and she is doing wonderfully!

It’s not rocket science, but I do have to do some prep to take it from our breakfast nook with a table that just leaves enough room to get into the chairs for meals to the “sewing studio” for Tiny Sewists.

First I have to take the chairs from the right side of the table and stash them in the kitchen.  I carefully slide shove the table against the lawyer’s bookcase on the right wall and the other chairs can hang out on the left.  A small table we normally use as an end table in the living room and a child-sized chair come into the room to house the sewing machine and Arden.  The only problem is that South-facing window gets waaaay too much light at certain times of the day.  There’s an easy solution for that:

The same reflector kit I linked previously has a filter zipped inside.  I prop this in the window when the timing has us working during this bright part of the day and it takes everything down to a nice even light.  See what a difference this makes?  Scroll up and down and look at the light shining on the floor.

Here’s a side by side of one of the final shots for the Tiny Sewists series, and the wide shot showing the layout.  In summary, the features of this setup are:

Attributes:  Two South-facing windows, and another window facing East right where I set up the table for sewing.  When I was deciding where to set this up, I also needed to consider where power outlets were located, and the one up high on this wall works well.  The wall are painted a pale yellow; more an off-white.  It can get too much light when the sun is low in the sky.

Equipment:  When necessary, a photography filter.

Prep:  Move table and chairs, bring in the table, child’s chair and sewing machine.

I’ve got at least one more post on this topic to share, so check back for that!