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Budget Design Challenge

So we're going to start out by showing the budget design challenge which nobody here has seen including miko who edit it thiss should be very interesting um we uh I decided to start with a budget of two hundred fifty dollars and see what we could get and the products that we were buying was anything that you could use to help shoot in a better way so it wasn't necessary like had outfit your studio or props or lighting it was kind of full of it so we're just gonna play it see what we got so I'm out here in seattle washington we're spending the day running around seattle finding really cool low budget ideas for how to shoot fortress or just see happen you get creative pickings up in various stores and put your studio together for under two hundred fifty dollars that's what I have to spend today one thing that people think about when they get a new space whether it's an addict or a garage or a home studio is maybe they could find a cheap easy place to shoot with flooring is not so hot ide...

as like this we can look at things that are simulate stone or wood or any sort of tile sort of options rims carpet remnants if you could see right here we've got kind of a wide sampling these air basically leftover pieces that they sell they'll bind up and sell really, really chiefly, 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 was very soft and cheap. Never seen some of those portrait's where little child look at themselves in first time mirror and playing around. You could consider doing something like this, where you get an unfinished mirror that's about sixteen my sixty in size it's, about twenty four, ninety nine and it's, just simply the mirror. And what you could do is frame it, find a vintage frame or frame it from your own framing store and do something cool so that it fits your studio space and it's really lightweight, easy and you throw it on the ground and just have a toddler crawl across it and see what kind of shots. Yet this works really well, especially black and white, so one great idea, and we're gonna ride over and find some dry wood and fabric. Mr boot gun. The edge of the fire would lay down some fabric, and you've got a ready made easy dr dictate and deputy forty. You need this, your studio, any kind of tea. Do you have the same? You know very little about insulation, except for the fact that slate boards are fantastic backdrop. So this is ten dollars and fifty five cents for a sheet that is a four by eight. Plywood is really cool, because if you get the super superfine, which is about the way to go, dave. Um, this is four by eight sheets. Um, the nice thing about this is it gives a totally of it looking, feel and texture. And when you paint this versus painting the insulation board, it takes on a very different look. It's darker, it's, richer it's. More like what clamps are like my favorite. I have plans with all different sizes there, so useful for so many things. Okay, so we left the home improvement warehouse with great products, but I need a few extra things added the next I wanna find fabrics sort of fabric that I can't fight a plywood with dunn. I want to find some sort of posing, stools, chairs or something for my little ones. Teo, sit on and mix things up a little bit and I just want to explore see what things I confined inside this store of value wear now in bed sheets, and I found this for nine ninety nine. This has got a little bit more of a gymnast feel to it, so I don't even know exactly what he's thinking, but it holds me and it's one dollars, ninety nine cents and it's a really cool color. We're now in front of prima pop in there and see if he's got it weii spoken the phone, thanks for letting us come okay yeah so this is what I have a home alright we're all done with our design challenge we start out with two hundred dollars and we are left with twenty uh thirty two you're thirty three eleven were thirty three dollars left left and for the earlier promise that also means we're getting lunch really good until this is lunch that's being paid for by the remains of our budget design challenge you guys enjoy that and you'll learn something and has new ideas and hopefully we'll come back and share them with us to thank you okay so um the things that we found we have a lot of the stuff that we could actually pull over I don't know joy if you could bring some of that stuff over to show you what we found why we picked it out and what you can do with it um I think that nico had like hours to work with that he had to pare that down uh maybe we could get an extended version to kind of break it out later but let's show you some of this right now tomorrow our buddy uh peter heins says that you could take over for tyler and extreme well makeover I have time he wants to keep his job uh okay so this if we noticed the insulation board what we did to say I've ever seen in my life I love it looks so good who did? Takeover bids are now. This was an audience participation. This is insulation board that you can buy at, um, any sort of, uh, home improvement warehouse. I'm not using any brand names here, and, um, this it comes like this in the front, and you can see this. You see that? Yeah. And this in the back. So that's, what you're getting and it's extremely lightweight and porous. And what you do is you peel off the front of the silver. And, um, nikki, how did you find that, uh, the underneath of my finger. Now blood. And also it took three to four hours of super sent ball. There's. No problem with it. Yeah, I'm katya. Nikki showed up literally first day in the studio, and I was like, hey, can you do that little thing? And nicky looked and she's, like I've been rolling cigarettes. And those fifteen u think that would take a seconds and katie's a get well with that out three hours later. Like, why have you done this to me? But, you know, we're not here to fire I feel that if you had the right tools like we didn't have any, we had our fingernails and then four hours in someone gave us like, a little razor blade to help with you, but, uh, I think if you had the right tools, like a party night for something like that to help, like, get it up a little bit, wouldn't it? Wouldn't be a four hour plastic spoon does not help lasted just thinking no one hearing bad one of those doesn't know what it wouldn't be that hard. I think you're right. What if you, like, poured yourself and blue and started here and just rolled across? They would be a better option, I think glue and skins not too sure about that, so you peel this part off and what you get underneath is this, which is this basically kind of modeled tex cherie funky kind of thing that you can paint with any color you want. And what we did when we were in the warehouse is we purchased a mechanic paint and we were able to split it up into four different colors and got four different courts of paints and got to pick out the painkillers she wanted so hopefully we'll be able to show that I'm the extended version kind of showing how we did that what conversations tohave when you're in the warehouse they hope in improvement warehouse to be able to get what you want without paying more and so he painted this um the uh I think this was the lime green or some but obviously you khun do two of these right next to each other and so you have a backdrop that goes eight feet wide and eight feet tall and you just tape it together in the back um and the lovely thing about this is if you want texture you have your subject close to it if you do not want any texture you just want the to convey this feel of this color that you move your subject out um so I have several of these in different colors in my studio you can also paint one one color another another color tape it together and do some quirky shots with your subject in front of them on the other side if you choose not to take on the fantastic task of tearing your finger tips to bit you can shoot this metallic side as is and again as long as you separated from your subject and you're shooting with a very wide depth of field it ends up looking kind of glassy and metallic and cool um I did a shoot for a cover of a fitness magazine where we wanted this to be a silver for endurance magazine we wanted this to be silver and want to look very metallic and so we had it kind of halfway I would say it was about the length of the height of our subject um back and I did more than hdr effect to the image so that everything was the dynamic range was really popped up and it looked very edgy and cool and the metal looked very cool um so there's some fun things you can do here ma'am in addition we have the plywood that we purchased at the warehouse um and again the cost to those were like what was the cost of that? Do you remember sauced dollars this the cost of that? Yeah, but there's what ten dollars each okay and talking about the effort that goes into it like most things in life um you can save money but it's gonna cost you time as gonna cost you effort so if you're right now um short on cash but long on time these air fantastic options for you or if you feel like you can hire somebody to do them quickly and enjoy them whether it's assistant and an intern or anything like that um these are great task for them to dio this plywood wass what twelve dollars eleven dollars and um and you can get them in multiple sheets and also try seal them together or just get a sheet and what we did here this was the damask thing we bought for I remember how much this was eight ninety nine not yeah um and a glue gun we bought a hot glue gun and sealed around the edges I think this was the suggestion from mork eight more we got a lot of great suggestions on twitter and facebook and basically seal it down around the edges and I think jim put this together right because you're just a visitor with a combo of effort is a combo of effort and they had the design I to say hey what if we recall it up a little bit have that kind of field going on and I think that actually came out really cool so this would be a fun thing to shoot against um have that kind of look going and on the other side yeah right yeah, we could do it this is surprisingly heavy. Oh no we broke creative life um on the other side is a purple paint um put across like a lavender paint and this could end up looking really smooth and cool um as well the upside to this is you khun leaning against a wall and stays by itself you don't have to worry about it flopping um you're gonna want to secure it just to be safe. The downside to this is it's heavy so you really need to secure it because otherwise you can run into some issues if if if it falls all right in addition for three dollars in ninety nine cents each way got this lovely diffuser panel um you can find these anywhere I have these in this color as well a scream I have them with just straight like this as well as the kind of textured effect that they come in um these air like just for your curtains you know, for your window but you can jam a bunch of these together for three bucks each and create a really soft fluffy space for little children to play in and I'm depending on the angle you shoot from it could look really kind of heavenly and sweet vs cheaper finish you can also ladies in front of a window and use them as a dude fuser panel if you don't have some sort of scream or something on your window diffuser on your window s oh, these are great for a lot of different things broke yeah, I know we can win if you fold that I move that thing all around my studio then we got these guys and actually I just saw somebody on the twitter feed on the last great comment on these chairs we got these at a value vintage store on dh just found them in there this was five ninety nine this guy this things things super cool fun retro don't you think you do a lot of cool things with this you can totally see what you're d'oh um it's scratched up a little bit but that adds to it I feel these where um this for like one, ninety nine right these were mega cheap to ninety nine cent like that what you can do you love the color as is it's great or you want to distress it a little bit or go ahead and sand it down and then add a new texture or paint or stain to it that would pale I just showed you the same thing you could stain it and have a really dark rich wood on one side and a light I'm software on the other the one thing to keep in mind if you buy something like this listen to this just be careful not to collapse the first time someone's it's into it so go ahead and screw that a little tighter he saw me sitting on this this was a buck ninety nine I think this was some sort of cables cables, fuller, ma'am one ninety nine that somebody had already painted and done something funny with and I would just leave this as is and make this just a cute little thing that anybody could plop down on help me uh these are my clamps I am a clamp freak that's a quote from a clam freak but I am I have ah, probably a drawer full of all states and sizes of these heavy really, really thick ones that can hold thick fabric in place. Um the medium ones for those thin insulation boards and these super little ones are absolutely perfect for holding clothing back are drawing necklaces up so they fit necklines better. Um anything that you want to do with that the's air really fabulous. I have so many of these and these were thirty seven cents three ninety nine something like that I want to put all the prices online okay, because people are asking for that. What about the prices on tape and nico, do you think we could do it also an extended version of that? What do you think I e I mean nothing. Nothing but we could put these prices of banks with all the receipts so we could put all the prices online for all the products you bought. This is packing tape which I use a million different ways packing tape duct tape um and um I don't actually use the duct tape oh the deputy forty for like everything especially the backdrop rollers and um the uh uh what was the other one we're just saying oh air masks you can always get those it's like you've got toddlers and babies and you're changing you're changing diapers and this air master really easy to find like they're no no just uh okay so you saw me read into the phrasing warehouse frame up very lovely gentlemen help us out with this um these air four by eight foam boards foam core art boards I think we decided they were foam core this is what they used to match the amount the images when they come in and basically they cut them and chop him up into little sizes so I have some of these that are two by three two foot by three foot that I use simply as reflectors really cheap reflectors you couldn't take them use a bow cutter and come to any size you want so if you want to many little reflector just to have the car for any purpose is I mean it's ridiculously cheap this was thirty dollars, thirty three years something thirty three dollars aside I obviously got to them it cost me about sixty nine dollars all together and then um just used packing tape on this side to seal them together and I got these got five, six years ago and I have a few of them and use them all all the time and they get dinged or scratched or scrunch up in the corners it doesn't matter there reflectors on dh you can use them not only to reflect light back on your subjects but also to block the shoot. Um if you have an open space and you're doing a meet meeting in one space and a shoot, another space or something like that and you got those that frame up I got is a frame up and so what I did was and I should just go ahead and okay, I'll just tell the story it's gonna be embarrassing, but, um I was looking for something like this I had the idea that I wanted to do something like this and I didn't exactly know how to do it, so I was looking around and I found melamine, which is not foam core, and I found this story about forty five minutes out and about six four by eight sheets of melamine, which is this big and incredibly heavy and relatively useless in terms of anything you can use in your studio and I but I bought the sheets, but I thought I'm gonna figure out how to maybe mount them or keep them in place and use them because I hadn't yet found this in the size I wanted, everything I saw was smaller and I hadn't had the thought yet to find out if they could order it in for me on a size I wanted so I ordered the melamine and they loaded up to top my car and I said, are you sure that's gonna stay because it looks like heavy and you know we'll be okay refine and so I start driving and I feel like all this wind resistance as I'm driving back and thinking, I wonder if this is okay and one of this ok? And then something here how's it go I pull off the side of road and two or three of them it snapped off and fallen back and it was like I pulled over. I look back on this like, snack snack snack and I got a car and I'm like, I could have, like, taking out the highway behind me. Um I was totally forget out it was just end up being like this miserable experience, so just don't get melamine. You want foam core it's like no one gets hurt, including yourself and people driving behind you. Okay, so were there any of the other products to show the teddy barry? Think, oh, yeah, I am, but what about the fan and the extension cord inal that remember that okay, this is hilarious were sitting there, we were sitting there and I'm thinking of about things to explore and products to find and I found this many little fan and I was like, well this is perfect as you can hold it up right into subject to do little model effect and make it fun because it's cute little uh okay so here's a little fan and it was like seven, ninety nine um and I was like this would be fantastic except for the fact that you're not gonna get very far and hasn't staying there in front of all these products I want five you have funny that was as I'm staying there front of all those products I looked behind me and there was an extension cord I'm like oh but there's this and I pick it up and we realized we could plug that in and right next to that was a tripod for twelve dollars I was like oh there's a tripod and the negroes like look behind you and I look behind me and there's a cinema display for twenty seven dollars there's all like in this spot in the vintage kind of secondhand store so the things you confined their ridiculous what this place is a cinema display apple cinnamon display it was like as in a cinema it was like a small monitor for twenty seven dollars um it did look like his maybe six, seven years old I don't know if it worked but it had been a good deal but did um so I mean, it's just as you walk through there's so many things, including this, uh, teddy bear that we found for a buck ninety nine, this huge one that I would suggest washing before you bring out to your clients um and the teddy bear again, I always look for things that if it's going to make its way into my shot, I want it to look good. I don't want something that's a neon bright kind of crazy branded thing I want to be a very vintage looking, um bear or something, but mostly I just want them to hold it, like between things that we're doing to feel little more comfortable. Okay, so all of that, all the products he bought and someone I don't even think we showed you weave we purchased the glue gun that glue um the all the paints, the paintbrush um all that sort of stuff we end up coming to a total of two hundred and twenty something thirty? Yeah, at two. Fifty. So yeah, in the two twenties, esso and there's a whole bunch of shit with a whole bunch of different backdrops and reflectors and extra tools and posing stools and yeah, so an enormous amount of opportunity out there if you want to take the time to go find those things