Despite all the photography I need for my store, my setup has always been fairly primitive: a pose ball thrown in front of a whiteboard. This worked well enough for product shots, but after seeing all the wonderful portraits on
SLU's Style thread or fashion blogs like Strange Pixels, I've started hankering to stretch a little more.
Several people have shown me their very nifty commercial sets, and I was right on the verge of buying one when Ned gave me a link to Sarah Nerd's tutorial for building a photo studio.
Taking Decent SL Pictures Without Photo Equipment Tutorial | Your2ndPlace
That sounded like fun, so I gave it a try and I'm fairly pleased with the results. It's a step up from my original setup, but still simple enough that I don't get impatient with figuring out all the bells and whistles that the commercial packages provide. (I know myself by now: the features always sound great, but then I never use them.)
I loaded the sphere with backdrop textures (free source wallpapers on the web) and a script to change on touch. Two beams hold an array of lights that create a fairly even lighting.
Next on my agenda is to play with the lights arrangements for some different effects and better shadow/highlighting.