Lets start with my set up but keep in mind... This was my first time attempting something like this!

My amazing wife is a yard sale shopping extraordinaire and found some lights that are generally used in mechanic shops and garages. You know, the giant square ones that create enough heat to warm up a decent size living room... Yeah those things and she found 3 of them! Even better she managed to get all 3 of them plus their stands for $20!

But there was a downside to this. Big. Bright. YELLOW. Light. These things poor on the yellow like no ones business and I don't have any filters! This left me pondering a solution because no one is going to want their product discolored.

Solution? Lightroom! I did some testing at home with random things around the house and nothing worked but once I threw the photos in lightroom... boom! All I had to do was move that temperature bar away from the yellows and into the blues! That's it. Problem solved. All that was left to do was some basic editing to being out the amazing details from the model.

"Well why didn't you just use auto white balance on your camera?" You may be asking. You can blame the Improve Photography Podcast for that and to be honest after doing my own testing they were right. I got better color and depth turning off my white balance and just changing it in lightroom.

Lets move on to my other gear. I did all of these pictures with my Canon t3i, the kit lens, and a macro filter screwed on to it. That's it. Nothing super fancy. No hyper expensive macro lenses. No uber powerful full frame camera. Just a crop sensor that's 3 generation out dated and a kit lens camera. Oh and the macro filter? Like $20 for 3 different magnifications at my local camera shop.

This shoot taught me a lot about trial and error. It showed me that even a simple set up can do wonders if you just put in the effort. Thank you for reading and please enjoy the last few images.