I have been trying to get some descent photos of Cubees lately – and failing pretty spectacularly.  I got a new camera recently and it has a setting that will let you shoot close up (macro), but that’s only one part of getting nice shots off.  I have talked to a few people – professionals and amateurs alike – and put together the best of the  hints and links that I think have helped me and might help you if you’re interested.

• Figure on Cheap Lighting – A nice guide to getting good shots of toys etc on the cheap.  [Found via Tomopop.]

• I talked to Marshall Alexander since his site is pretty photo heavy and he is actually shooting papercraft (versus the above link shooting PVC.)  Here are his tips:

- I bought a better camera that has a good macro mode that enables to take pictures from really close that are still sharp.

- Most of my shots I actually take outside. There’s nothing better than daylight, which saves me a lot of post-processing. Make sure there’s not too much wind and sunlight though, for the obvious reasons

- In most cases I perform white balance correction in Photoshop, I’ve copied the text from an online tutorial below that explains what I do:

“White Point Dropper

This lets you make anything a pure white. It’s also is used to correct underexposure.

Go to the LEVELS adjustment either by IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > LEVELS or simply command + L. Look for a white eyedropper on the lower right of the adjustment panel. Click it. Now hover over your image and click on whatever part is supposed to be white. Voila! Photoshop makes it white.

This is a powerful tool so be careful. Click on something that is supposed to be blue and it turns everything red trying to make blue look white. Set your eyedropper sample size to 5 x 5 pixels to make this easier to use. You set this by clicking the eyedropper tin the tool pallet on the left first.”

- Avoid backgrounds with a lot of grainy texture. Pixels and grainy stuff don’t go well together.

- Take lots of photos, so you’ve got a good selection to choose from. Most of the time 99% of my shots are crap and there’s one that is good enough to work with.

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