She who must be obeyed pronounces that she is to sell some jewelry via eBay. This is a follow-up to her stunning success in selling a silk scarf for at least $3 profit. My mission, if I will accept it, and I dare not, is to photograph the items for sale. I ask her is she is prepared to finance a lightbox so I can photograph her baubles properly; a couple of hundred dollars should be sufficient. Not surprisingly she declines and I decide to build my own. The previous evening we had purchased a weird indoor pond device.
Three mini-fountains and a rotating ball, powered by a pump that will doubtless fail within the month. Still, it was only a few hundred baht and it was thought that the cats may enjoy watching the water cascading about.
Of course the cats gave it no more than a passing glance; but they were very happy with the box it came in. Any new box that comes into the house is examined closely, played it, slept in, and then completely ignored after a week. So the cats were deeply pissed off when I took their new box to transform into a lightbox.
It’s simple enough that even Blue Peter could manage it. Cut holes in three sides and stick in some tracing paper so the light will be let into the box and diffused. Put a curve of paper inside so objects can be photographed against a seamless background. Just a few minutes work under normal operating conditions; but when you are fighting off two cats who are keen to reclaim the inside of the box, want to check out what you are doing, need to attack the tracing paper and eat the glue; well it takes an hour or so.
The final result was crude but functional. The cats decided it was a new box and claimed it.
Beating off feline attention, we took some photos which are now heading for eBay.
Will she make a fortune? Well, if I had a day job I wouldn’t give it up.