Photographer? Broke? Stingy? Rather do it the hard way?….. Good, that’s healthy!…probably, read on!…
Providing you have been to your local craft/arts supply store and bought:
1. Foam board
2. Gaffer tape/duct tape
3. Scalpel
4. Meter rule (or anything with a straight flat edge)
5. Pen
6. Opaque thin paper / white large carrier bag
It is completely possible to construct this in less than an hour, maybe even faster if you use power tools instead of a scalpel. Well we may begin…
- Draw a huge “X” corner to corner using the pen and meter rule on the foam board
- How big is your flash gun/light source? Well a hole this big needs to be marked out and cut, roughly measure out the size you want the rectangular back to be, mark it, then a smaller square/rectangle for the hole in the centre where you’ll poke your flash gun through
- Now using the smaller square (lets call it…erm, the light hole) in the centre as a guide and the corners of the bigger square (the back), mark out out an area to cut
- Cut with scalpel (see image below)
- Score the lines in of the bigger box, allowing the board to bend neatly
- Cut the centre hole
- Grab the gaffer tape, fold the sides… do what feels right and natural!
- Almost done… Finally it needs something to diffuse the light, opaque paper may work well, I just used the bag that the foam board came in! Put the paper/bag/or whatever on the front… duct tape it!
- DONE!
Put the flash on a tripod/table/person follow your usual wireless flash set up, start shooting (or go back to work as the hour’s probably up by now)
You could even buy two pieces of foarm board and now you have a budget reflector too!
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