How to

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Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

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1. 
   Cut the Bottom of the Milk Jug

   The first thing you’ll need to do is to cut the entire bottom out of the milk jug with the craft knife. Also, if necessary, remove a portion from the top of the jug just large enough to insert your camera lens.

2. 

   Place the jug on top of the object you are going to photograph. I chose a black table as the surface for my sample, but you can vary the color and texture of your photo’s background by selecting a different surface. Get creative with your surface and experiment using different fabrics, colored paper, and natural textures such as cement or sand.

3. 

   Find a strong light source. Direct sunlight, either indoors or outdoors will work, as will a table lamp, a desk lamp or a clamp on lamp from the hardware store. If you choose to work with a lamp indoors, it’s best to use a “Daylight” bulb, as a regular lightbulb will provide an undesirable yellow cast to your images.

4. 

   Insert your camera lens into the top of the milk jug and snap your picture. Hint: If you are using a point and shoot camera, be sure to disable the camera’s flash.

5. 

   You can vary the perspective by cutting the side out of a milk jug and taping a backdrop” over the missing bottom of the milk jug. Choose your surface and place milk jug over object. You will then shoot from the side,

6. 

   Try adding several lights sources for effect. Play with different backdrops and different surfaces. You could even try the seamless paper effect, which would allow you to achieve the classic “isolated” effect.

7. 

   Got milk? Then, with a little ingenuity, you too can capture professional looking photographs of small objects.

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on 9/28/2009 this author is NOT affiliated with Proshooter.com