Photo Tent

After my post about forty-eight hours in my life, I got a number of questions about my photo tent.

I bought it several years ago, but I've finally been using it lately and it's awesome!  I bought it as part of a kit.

The kit comes (in a soft sided suitcase) and contains two foldable photo tents (one smaller than those pictured -- and which I never use), a tripod, several background drops, and two lights.

Here's my feedback on the kit:

• The tripod is lightweight, but great.  I use it all the time for all sorts of things.  It's aluminum and plastic.
• I love the large photo tent, though I do find it really difficult to fold down to the tiny size it arrived at.  I've watched the video tutorials on how to do that second fold, but it just doesn't happen that way for me, so I mostly leave it folded flat, but on the larger size.  
• The lights are super bright and do a great job.  
• Everything collapses down to fit right back into that suitcase, if you want.  But I find it easier to leave the lights out and assembled.
• As I mentioned above, I never use the tiny photo tent, it's just too small.  Perhaps if I were only shooting jewelry or something that size?
• I also never use the colored backgrounds.  This is mostly inertia.  They're stored away in the closet and I'd have to go digging to get them.

For years I've been using natural light to take photos.  I would wait for a nice day and go outside on the terrace to photograph my projects.  In the past:

• I've lost a project to the wind.
• I've gotten projects wet in puddles or snow drifts.
• I've been unable to go outside to take photos because of rain or wind.
• I'm constantly fighting with the wind to stop flipping pages in my art journal when I'm trying to photograph it.
• I've been unable to take photos after a certain time of day (because it gets dark).

Because this winter has been so darn miserable I decided to unearth the photo tent from the back of the closet.  It was a really good decision.  Now I can take great photos at any hour of the day!  

Here are some recent photos taken in the photo tent (I'm sure you'll remember seeing them on the blog):

The photo tent simply offers a nice clean backdrop.  And the lighting is even and natural.

Hope that helps to answer your questions!