DIY Project: Wood Table For Product Photography

Last month I’ve been really fascinated with food photography and product shots with wood table or wood texture in the background. Ever since I’ve been planning to try and make my own. Eventually I stopped procrastinating and just started doing it. This is my first prototype and it works pretty well, tough I am not promising to improve on future version.

First thing I did was bought 2nd hand wood planks from local hardware for about US$5 for 10pcs.

I have seen other people doing back to back wood planks but I also wanted a plain wood table, so I went with one side being the wood plank and the other side plain wood.

I cut the wood so that it would fit at the back of the wood planks

After some sanding it was time to wood glue the two sides together

The two sides

Only using wood glue, I sticked the planks and plywood together

Only using wood glue, I stacked the planks and plywood together

To make sure the two sides sticked together I left it overnight and used my lightstands and backgrounds stands for for weights

To make sure the two sides were snug together I left it overnight and used my light stands and backgrounds stands as weights

I wanted to try it out before I varnished and painted them because I really liked the texture and the color of it even if it was plain.

Setup shot using the big mama and my white seamless paper as a reflector

This is the Plank side of the wood

This is the plywood side still using the same lighting

I tried looking for grey varnish here in the Philippines but couldn’t find any so I just thought of using a really dark varnish and white paint for the sides. (Planning to make a grey one in the future using grey water based paint that is diluted)

3 Coats of Varnish of the plywood side

First coat of white paint on the plank side. I first tried painting the white very light but I didn’t like the result so I just painted it really white.

After painting the wood plank side plain white and letting it dry in the sun

I was excited to try it out so after it dried I borrowed my girlfriends cellphone to test out the finished product.

Now to test it out inside the studio:

Varnished

The setup shot for the plywood side.

Plywood side with varnish

Painted

The Setup shot for the wood plank side

White Plank Side

This is just my first try and still planning to make more because it’s pretty easy to do and is a really great background for product/food photography shots. The one thing I learned about this is you should test out the paint and varnish before applying it to the final product. It took me 2 days to do this project because of the time to wait for the wood glue and the varnish and paint to dry but all worth it.