Keep reading to see how I made a light box to take photos of my puppets and make them more professional looking.
This is the way I used to take photos in my flat. I took the photos in front of a window so that I could get good natural light, but the result had my cupboards in the background. Not very professional looking. So I decided to build a light box to give my puppets a smooth background and boost the professional look of my photos.
So to make a light box, I knew I'd need quite a big box to fit in a puppet and arms gesturing. I didn't have such a big box, but I did have two smaller boxes which I taped together to make one big box.
Then I folded down the bottom flaps of the boxes. They don't fit together over the bottom, but this is perfect as I need a hole at the bottom of the box for my hand to go through.
With the box fully formed I just checked that my bit of A1 card fits in properly.
Removing the card, I then cut out three sides leaving a frame around. I also put a second bit of cardboard over the two side pieces that were a bit squiffy because of the way the boxes joined. This just gave a bit more support to these dodgy struts.
I then covered the top and the two sides with layout paper. this will help to diffuse the light so that there are not any sun/shade spots in the photos. On the top I left a slot at the back of the box so that I could slide in the A1 card. The card I bought is dark grey, on the other side the card is white (as shown in these pictures). This allows me to have two options from the one piece of card.
This is the final light box. All that is required now is a hole for a puppeting arm to go through.
Here I have cut a hole and inserted my puppet stand. The whole lot is standing on top of a box. This space underneath the light box allows the puppets arm rods to stick through the hole and I can pose the arms before taking a picture - as shown below.
One more tip - I used a gorilla camera stand to hold the camera on to my hand. My other hand is holding the bottom of the arms rods in position, or where I have a mechanism to hold the puppets mouth open my other hand is doing that.