Amazing photos are an absolute must when conveying the beauty and quality of your furniture to customers.  But it can be a challenge to take photos without a dedicated photography studio.

I’ve spent years lugging furniture into rooms of my home, redecorating the room, just to get a photo. This extra step adds much time and complexity to every order, as furniture can be heavy and cumbersome to move.  Now that Pine + Main is live, I decided it was time to create a better photography space right in my garage.  Today, I’m going to show you how to build a photo backdrop storage wall.

A few of our amazing makers have created photography spaces –

Build Like a Chick has remodeled her garage and created a beautiful photography wall with her logo – so not only is it easy to photograph every piece she makes, but her logo is automatically in every photo.

Rustic Meadows has a beautiful wall and uses their sign to bring their logo into their furniture project photos.

Unfortunately, I did not have the space in our garage for a dedicated photo wall.  So I thought, why not build a wall that folds up?  And has storage in the framing – because you always need more storage in the garage. So here’s what I came up with –

Two tower bookshelves perfect for my power tools and paints and stain.

The tower bookshelves fold out on a hinge, with caster wheels at the base.  I finished the back side of the bookshelf with scrap 1/4″ plywood ripped into 6″ wide strips and nailed to the back (but you could use anything on the back).

When both are folded open, the back wall is twice as wide as the side tower walls.  It’s easy to then to place a light on each side to minimize shadows.

And snap a good enough photo quickly and easily without having to remodel my house or lug furniture outside hoping for good light.

The back is also storage, but honestly, it is quite difficult to access, so if I had to do it again, I’d maybe make the back just a framed wall or something simpler.

Here are the diagrams that I used to build my folding storage wall backdrop, but I do wish I had built mine 6 feet wide instead of four –  the four just isn’t big enough for photographing queen beds or media consoles.

I used 1x8s for my shelving to keep it narrow for stowing, but there’s no reason wider width boards (or narrower width, especially on the larger back bookshelf that is less accessible) wouldn’t work too.

The benefit of the 4 foot width is it works with standard panel goods – so you could just use beadboard for the backs.  I ended up burning up all my scrap 1/4″ plywood by ripping it into strips and nailing on.

 I hinged mine together on the sides so the hinges are hidden, and added four caster wheels under each bookshelf.

Now I just need to make a cute sign or logo.  Hope you enjoyed this post on how to build a photo backdrop storage wall!