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Bonus: Extended Shopping Design Challenge Video

So I'm out here in seattle, washington and it's cold I think we're at thirty nine degrees right now but it's not raining sore psyched we're gonna be spending the day running around seattle finding really cool low budget ideas for how to shoot portrait and so whether it's some sort of light modifier or a backdrop for opposing tool or whatever, we'll just see how can you get creative pick things up in various stores and put your studio together for under two hundred fifty dollars that's what I have to spend today so I haven't done any advanced math I have no idea this will actually work, but we're going out with this money and whatever we're left over with myself and our film crew and producer are going to go out on the town with so there's a lot of incentive here to keep the budget let's go inside to this warehouse of home improvement and we're at the flooring area. One thing that people think about when they get a new space whether it's an attic or a garage or home studio is maybe they...

could find a cheap easy place to shoot but the flooring is not so hot, so ideas like this where you can look at things that are simulate stone or wood or any sort of tile sort of options I mean I would depending on your shooting style, you know I wouldn't go for something like this, but I would be very interested in something like this and what you could think about this is about a buck a square, and if you have maybe twelve, square feet, you're about one hundred forty four of these, um, you talk about one hundred forty four dollars, for your flooring. Basically, if you want to be able to pull this together, you can think about darkening this if you wanted to be a little darker stone or whatever the case may be in my budget challenge right now, I don't need this. I'm all set for flooring, but it's something to consider rams carpet remnants I call the remnants and they corrected me and said, they're just rams if you could see right here, we've got kind of ah wide sampling these air, basically leftover pieces that they sell, they'll bind up and sell really, really cheaply some of these air fourteen dollars, three by five spaces for by six I've seen some that eight by twelve regular sizes as well. Um, I don't see what I'm looking at this anything here that would jump out to me that I want to shoot on, but I have been in stores of various time and seen some really lovely, almost like this. But kind of the white shag that looks really great with baby portrait sir is very soft and cheap cheap and easy so uh consider the remnant just section when you come to the local warehouse deck tape and deputy forty you need this for your studio any kind of tea do you have the same for three thirty eight and four forty seven these khun do a world of good for you have you ever seen some of those portrait's where a little child look at themselves for the first time in a mirror and playing around and you see those shots a lot when you're having lifestyle images in the home in the child's in the bathroom playing in the mirror you can consider doing something like this where you get an unfinished mirror that's about sixteen by sixty in size it's about twenty four, ninety nine and it's just simply the mirror and what you can do is frame it find a vintage frame or frame it from your own framing store and do something cool so that it it's your studio space and it's really lightweight easy and you'll be thrown on the ground and just have a toddler crawl across it and see what kind of shots you can get this works really well especially black and white totally that's good let's go then okay glue gun glue guns are awesome not only for halloween costumes but for outfitting your studio so one great idea and we're gonna ride over and find some plywood and fabric it's a glue gun the edge of the pie would lay down some fabric and you've got a ready made easy backdrop glue gun sixteen dollars and seventy six cents and I'm going to buy it not right here but when we check out I know very little about insulation except for the fact that insulation boards are fantastic backdrops and I have quite a few of my studio. All right, so these are kind of thick I think you can find them thinner ones right up here. Um, yeah, this is what I'm talking about. Okay, so this is ten dollars and fifty five cents for a sheet that is a four by eight and I have I think eight of these in my studio and basically what you have here is you have this plastic cover on the front and you've got this silver on the back. So, um I have to these just like this exactly untouched taped together. And when you separate your subject far enough away from the backdrop this looks really kind of especially in black and white just has this very metallic cool milky look to it it's very lovely looking um and if you go over to this side and strip this part ofthe literally just pull it and strip it off like in el disco in strips um you can paint it let me see something real quick yeah, you can actually strip either side um you pull this back basically you get all the wooden part on and you come down so this which looks very texture and very kind of cool and then you can lay paint down you could either spray painted if you're outside were literally take a brush and paint across and what you're left with is quite a number of different color backdrops, so I'll have in my studio I have one that's kind of like a rusty orange I have one that's a lavender purple um I have another one that's like a mix of a couple colors together that I just thought looked really cool and you could take two or three of these across depending on how much space you what tape them up with masking tape or not masking tape what's the what's the thick plastic tape that you put on biggs what is it gafford ducky something tape but it's based on the one that doesn't show up and you put on the back and then you hold this up on dh it's just this lovely tech sure and background that is super light that's the big thing I don't want anything that can fall on my kids, so if this does fall I doesn't matter funny um and so whatever I'm doing any sort of backdrop that I'm clipping or anything like that I think about the fact that these kids are crazy and they're knocked something down I don't want them to get hurt so that's why everything is very thin and very light this again is how much I say ten ten fifty five um and I'm gonna pull two of these right now but if I were out putting my studio for the good at home I would have for them on hand at all times okay so plywood is um really cool because if you get the super super thin which is about the what is this an eighth of an inch a quarter inch we're to go days um this is ten, ninety seven a sheet it's a four by eight sheets and even though it's really thin for would it still would so it's still expected still heavy um the nice thing about this is it gives a totally of it looking feel and texture and when you pay this versus painting the insulation board it takes on a very different look it's darker it's richer it's more like wood so I'm in a pool one of these ongoing use it I can use it one of two ways I can have it like this and clamped up between my background stands um and then just have a little kid coming back and forth and having room to move on or I could make it tall for an older child, clamp it up like this and then have a lot of tall vertical space to move. Now, the thing to remember with this kind of plywood, which again is ten dollars and ninety seven fence, is that the front and back are completely different textures. So you have to back drops here, you have this which you can paint and or you could stain or you could really do anything with, and you have this side. But you get it has a totally different feel you could do one that's a really light would. When you won that's a very dark wood, you could do a purple paint on one door red paint on another, you have limitless options. So this is an incredible investment for ten dollars and ninety seven cents flashlights, I get a lot of questions about lighting, how expensive it can be can be very expensive, but there's some simple, easy little things that you can do if you find that you're having soft shadows that are bugging you and the phil options that are your disposal aren't working. So, you know, first and foremost, I strongly suggest reflectors when you're shooting a lot of the time. But maybe you have a situation where for whatever reason you can't handle a reflector and the child in the situation you're in grabbing a flashlight just doing a little pop of light right in their face and whether it's just a control a little bit of shadowing or to enhance the catch lights could be really fun especially if you're not worried about having to balance the color of the light and you're gonna be shooting in black and white anyway so we have a lot of options when it comes to flashlights um you could do the master industrial and go with a big honker that's gonna kind of save you you could do a much longer flashlight so you could get a little bit of distance you could even think about some way to mount that and have that as as an extra cheap light again this is thirteen dollars that's thirty dollars I don't think these little things we gotta do hardly anything for you so I would skip them. Um and then you couldn't have the regular I mean the normal kind of flashlights that you want to be about that ten dollar range um and can do a whole bunch for you clamps were in the clamp section um clamps are like my favorite I have cramps in all different sizes and they're so useful for so many things first and foremost we've got your five dollars and forty four cents you're incredible clamp it's hard to just even open but when we're talking about the plywood and have had a clamp that and you're gonna need something this strong so to be extra safe I would have two on each side to clamp that puppy down over here these are probably the clams I use the most for just stuff where I'm putting fabric on a board or fabric on something thin this is nice and easy it's got a really good half to its two backs and your middle ground this would be if you have to, you know, put it around a pole or something like that a c stand these guys are fantastic for clothing. I used these a lot when mama just spot something really cool it the gap and put it on for the first time which gets the studio and it's too big so we pull it back and we clamp it in the back. This is great for again wide collars or anything that that's bugging kids or irritating them. Um I have I think twenty of these in my studio that keep disappearing so other people obviously loved them too, but they're really useful for like, an exorbitant amount of things um I would like have these in all shapes and sizes in my studio and you could pick up a nice a sampling of everything for about fifteen twenty bucks tops and the last you for years and using for a ton of things for my purposes here I'm gonna be grabbing this and this because these will hold the uh, insulation boards really well and I'm gonna probably grab this and this for the plywood I'm trying to think the city that we're actually shooting in creative live in the production studio um I'm actually not gonna need these because the wood board I'm gonna use is gonna lean directly against the wall when we're gonna be fine but I'm definitely gonna need these and just to be safe for thirty seven cents each I'm gonna grab five of these six of these I just upgraded to six so this is what I'm buying here for a grand total of six forty and five times forty is two dollars minus six times three eighteen cents so about that much money pain fresh is come in um all sizes and shapes and costs um they can range from like what did I just see here like a twenty five dollar paintbrush fifteen dollar pay brush that's twenty yeah, here it is twenty one dollars paintbrush um all the way down to the cheap cheap I'm going with the cheap cheap because partly what I find especially when it comes to managing your budget from a design perspective is that you are sacrificing um the having somebody else estimate are being able to better, easier or faster because you're going to do it yourself. You're saving money, but you're putting in sweat, equity and it's the same thing when you're picking out paint fresh, we're going to get something that's like my goodness three dollars, ninety seven cents. Um oh, my gosh. That is even cheaper. Look at this. Some of these. Okay, if you want to go really crazy? Three ninety seven. Um, some of these wide ones here sixty seven cents. I wouldn't that's gonna be this ridiculous. So I would say three ninety seven is your paintbrush it's probably going to leave a little bit more hairs in there? It's gonna be a little bit of extra work, but you have to keep remembering that you're back. Strap is out of focus. It's not in the shot. You don't care if it's perfect. So we're gonna get this fresh and the reason I grab a paintbrush versus a spray paint scrapings. Definitely an option, but I just find that it kind of is a lot more er when you having this kind of pain and you're painting it into something especially porous, like the insulation board, you have a lot more chance of it really richly coding the board. Um, and also there's also the issue of the fumes that you might have to deal with if you're doing any sort of painting inside, it just becomes a little bit rougher with the spray painting versus brush. Awesome. Okay, where are we with price? Over. Okay, yes, I wanted all that to be four dollars, those in my thirty seven cents that's it what's our total. All right. Okay. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty one hundred days. Give me my change. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Have a great day. Okay, so we left the home improvement warehouse with some great products, but I need a few eggs. Stir things added into the next. I want to find fabric, some sort of fabric that I can apply to the plywood with the glue gun. I want to find some sort of posing stools or chairs or something for my little ones. Teo, sit on and mix things up a little bit. And, um, I just want to explore and see what kind of things that confined inside this store of value. So we're in a value slash thrift slash secondhand store looking around for additional ideas of what we can outfit a shooting area with. And when we were back in the home improvement warehouse, we bought some plywood and some insulation board, and one of the ideas with the plywood was to be able to use that glue gun, and this actually came in from mork eight more on twitter on the idea of using a good gun around the edge of plywood or some sort of background and putting fabric on top. So, um, we're looking at fabric options here and, you know, count all kinds of stuff, but one of things I'm looking for is a backdrop that is not super reflective, that does a little bit more absorbing life versus bouncing it back to me and I can use in a variety of ways I could do a lot of different shooting with it, so I'm going through and this seems to be the best I can tell sorted by color um, and the's are curtains, but again, I don't care a cz long as it's at least four feet wide or so are enough space for me to do something with, um, I just saw something popped out at me, okay? So I just said, I don't want something reflective that bounces right back at me, but I like this and I could be doing something pretty cool with this, um again, we're talking about a narrow window whole space, but that's about what the size we needed if you remember, um before and if I could do something where I put a fabric underneath it so it didn't go right through so light didn't shine and go back, basically back it and then have this on top. That could actually be a really cool backdrop. Okay, we found another one. Um, this is mohr again, that thick, more of, uh, fabric where we could hang and same thing like a four by eight. And again, if I'm shooting straight up on this, um, I don't love it, but if I'm shooting very wide open a strong lee shallow depth of field and I have a good separation, my section from background, this actually ends up looking pretty cool. Okay, these are a dime a dozen. I'm probably gonna grab a couple of these. Um, I think specifically, this cost it's three dollars and ninety nine cents and this is great for a soft, diffuse light. You can hang this in a window and just kind of calm, polite that's coming in or you can buy a ton of them and sew them together and have them be this really snugly beautiful gazi look that you wrap around on with its maternity portrait sor infants who are newborns uh you could do a lot with something like this I've got colors like this and um this kind of cream off way I have both of these in my studio and again if you take the fabric as is and just have it sewn together and it becomes this big kind of almost parachute blanket you can do a lot with that I'm gonna grab two of these so now I'm looking at sheets um a note to consider of course that anytime you're buying fabrics especially the secondhand store or really anywhere make sure you wash them not just for backdrops because uh but also of course if you've got kids running around playing in them but a big consideration is I'm not necessarily looking for um what do I want to wear what I want for my curtain what is like my favorite fabric I'm looking for what would look good slightly out of focus in the backdrop um this looks pretty good because it's a sheet and if you get really close you see that it's actually kind of tourney up it's not a great um but if I have it really, really far back and soft out of focus what I see is this really sweet pale green color and I see a little hint of a design and that's all I'm seeing so this is actually a really good option for five, ninety nine okay, we're now in bed sheet and I found this for ninety nine this has got a little bit more of a domestic feel to it and again it's got some patterns got some richness it has some really cool golds to it I could sink this in the background on the plywood photographing a child a good distance from it and um and using a bit of an antique kind of vintage feel to process the images and have something that looks really beautiful so I'm gonna go ahead and buy this for ninety nine and I'm going to be sealing it to the plywood okay? So nestled in the typewriter and dustbuster and a clock radio section we found a tripod for ninety nine talk about a great find a nice easy thing tohave again, this is probably not your go to for everything tripod but if you need something simple and sturdy ten bucks this found over the toy section this brain quest um little kind of when you have your interactive kids that are really into the give and take and you find that things are slowing down to get a little boring or something, you can put a little thing like this I actually have a little junior trivia pursuit thing where you just asked a few questions this on the fly very quick and very contest like and you get some really fun expressions and you're just clicking and asking I think we've stumbled onto a treasure trove right next to the typewriter and the alarm clock and the three dollars, ninety nine cents uh phone way found the windmere fan that is seven ninety nine um so the only negative I see about this is how short the court is but how cool this is to be able to use a little bit of wind effect really close and fun and kids colors and such just have to do a little more investigation into how to really extend that s o some wise people the producer just yeah, extension cord so we've use an extension cord no, seriously, we haven't moved. We're still next to the typewriter, the clock and the cinema display and we just found an extension cord for two, ninety nine. Okay, three, ninety nine chairs the first thing out of the gate like I actually love this color and I think this is way fun, but you could do anything, of course, but that you could strip it. You could spray paint it. Um you can knock off the back and just have it be a bottom stool and we have right now is this orange super retro five ninety nine stool that you could do all the same sort of things too? I don't know how easily you could strip off the back on this one but you could also, of course, pain, internet, anything you want, teo, and if you if you're shooting black and white, and with that seamless white background or a black background, I mean, literally to spray paint these black or white, and you're set so I don't even know exactly what this is, but it holds me and it's one dollar, ninety nine cents and it's a really cool color. Um, I don't know if this was somebody just really creative and painted some sort of school like device. I have no idea, but this is awesome, and I love it, and I'm definitely buying it for ninety nine um, this chair is looks like somebody took a brush to it and it's kind of kicked up right here and everything like that, I think's taken out, um, so you either love that it's shabby chic you're done, or you re paint it or you, uh, I don't for me, I would just leave it as is again, you have to keep considering the fact that if you're shooting shallow, if you're shooting, where the subject is the child and this is just a periphery thing, you don't really care too much, especially if you're adding some sort of texture to your shot. So for nineteen, ninety nine, we've got this perfectly so heist kid's chair. I have something actually, not too too similar in my studio. It's more of a kind of antique gold called color. Um, but if you can see it's pretty torn up here, um, whether you want to keep that or you want to have this for your pollster, or do you want to lay down some sort of slip cover? You got a lot of options here, and this is the kind of thing we a little kid could sit in it, mom. Okay, um get all snuggly and cute and cozy, and if you have little things, they love their blankets. Um, this could make for a really fun shot, and obviously you could also photograph adults in this just as well adult with a child all put together. So, um, I have a whole bit of stuffed animals in my studio that I wash regularly, and if you're sitting here looking at these like a buck ninety nineteen, ninety nine, you can see a whole assortment of animals. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that if you're using something like this to calm the child down or do a break or even to take some shots with, um just make sure you're grabbing something that actually looks good you're in the shot so you don't want a thing that's like um unless of course that's what you're going for but mostly want something that looks a little bit more timeless whether it's like a actual teddy bear or something um or a more neutral color something that's not going to distract from the subject you're photographing these air what a dollar ninety nine a dollar ninety nine I think these would cost you twenty in retail depending on the manufacturer so by them wash them, throw them out and have some really cool objects were kids to play with wear checking out hopefully really, really cheaply for you discount everything on top of the discount one thing I would suggest whenever purchasing things like this is tio take naps the bolts tighten up the screws nuts washers that forty forty two sixty two not thank you thanks for your help thank you have a great day too so we are now um somewhere else and seattle we've hit several stores recently and actually since we left the value slash thrift stache secondhand store we stopped into a drugstore because I remembered that the tape I was trying to remember the name of was packing tape and so we went into a drug store and grab some packing date we're now in front of frame up a local frame store and I called in advance and let him know that I was looking for art board um, or foam core depending on what you wanna call it. And the foam core I use in my studio four by eight foot sheet and I used them as a reflector stand up tall reflector. So I called advanced. He doesn't normally carry it in that size, but most local frame store's can order in advance and get it for you. That's. What? I didn't mind hometown. So gonna pop in there and see if he's got it. Hi, rob. How are you? Tamara, we spoke on the phone. Thanks for letting us come by. Um, this is beautiful. I love your frame lines. So we attacked about getting the art board or the phone for what do you call it? You call our border from poor phone board so it's like a mix of oh, what's the difference between art board and foam core phone cores? Well, no, this is that's foam core. Okay? And it's just a phone in er and paper on the outside and makes it okay and what's our board, our board is like a cardboard cardboard. Okay, so but when you're taking prints and you're mounting them, you use this, right? Ok, because I know that you can mount it on a whole much different thinks that you're a better circus for mountain okay, great. So you were able to get it in and the four by eight I could come back and see I'm assuming that's it it looks exactly like what I do okay yeah so this is what I have at home and therefore by it and they're super thin and how much are these each uh thirty dollars thirty dollars that's fantastic. Ok and how many of these you have to two that's all I need for today um when I am at home though I have two of these um one that I can use as a reflector and one that I use two sets I should say because I like to take these together and then have him stand up as a standalone reflector and then I have another one that can use as because I have a very open studio space and that is basically we have a privacy guard that gives me an extra bounce light teo so great so I could just take these and of course pay for them thank you for coming in and anything I've noticed about these is that I get these corners smashed up and they get scratched not everything but it doesn't like matter for what I'm using it for now okay, let me pay you way sure do need to have that which we don't I would recommend um like I said getting four of these calling an ask media four of these and the other thing to consider too as long as we're kind of talking about everything on the cheap is I'm gonna have a reflector in the studio but it be nice to get these in little little just kind of what size would you say this is two by three yeah a little too by threes for our affect her toe hold under kids like a really cheap reflected that works really well they come in thirty five forty okay, if I would come in by one of those how much of that cost? Eight or nine bucks and you got reflector s o great this is thirty plus tax plus thirty plus tax which brings me to you and this this set up with tape standing up um will last me ten years it'll last me forever and if it falls nobody's injured thank you really appreciate it. Alright, so we're all done with our design challenge. We start out with hundreds of dollars and we're left with twenty uh thirty two were thirty three eleven were thirty three dollars and eleven cents left and for the earlier promise. That also means we're getting lunch really good delicious lunch that's being paid for by the remains of our budget design challenge you guys enjoy that and you learn some things and new ideas and hopefully we'll come back and share them with us to thank you