Camera scaffolding

The best place in my apartment to take FO pictures is in the bedroom. There's good lighting, and a nice blank wall as a backdrop. This means I have to stand on my bed to take the photos, but that's not a terribly big deal. In my tiny apartment, it's the only place that provides a nice blank slate.

I put a tiny nail on one wall which works marvelously for putting a hanger, but modeled photos are a bit more tricky.

You see, the bedroom is RIDICULOUSLY tiny. There is barely room for the bed and two side tables. My dresser is SQUEEZED in there, somewhat uncomfortably. This means there is no place to set the camera for self portrait images.

UNTIL NOW.

I have a wire curtain rod on the wall with the windows, and it occurred to me that if I could somehow hang my camera from that wire, it would be PERFECT. And so, the camera scaffolding was born:



Ingredients:

• 1 small, thin board (I had one lying around from another strange hardware project; they cost about $1 at the hardware store)
• 2 lengths of string, roughly 2ft each (Cotton yarn works marvelously)
• Drill with teeny drill bit
• Darning needle (small enough to fit through the hole made by teeny drill bit)
• Hooks (the hook/clips I used are from IKEA and are meant to pinch to curtains and hang them over my curtain wire; wide kitchen hooks would likely work over most stiff curtain rods, too)

I'm quite pleased with the results. My camera has a custom timer feature that lets me have it wait ten seconds and then take ten shots in sequence, which means I can press the button once, hop up onto the bed, and get ten poses before I have to hop down and do it again. I'm TERRIBLE with self-portraiture, so usually out of 2-3 tries (20-30 shots!) I get 2-3 good images.

The setup is, like any scaffolding, a bit rickety and not especially stable. I would likely not do this with a SLR (certainly not without putting a pillow on the floor underneath), but it's not too difficult to balance my little point-and-shoot, and I like to live dangerously. A rubber band or two around the board, which you could pull around the camera to hold it in place, would likely be a big improvement.