Reddit mentions of TORCHSTAR Metal Swing Arm Desk Lamp, Interchangeable Base Or Clamp, Classic Architect Clip On Study Table Lamp, Multi-Joint, Adjustable Arm, Black Finish

For my quick-n-dirty photographs, I basically have three of these lights, withe results like this.

I have a more complex setup, involving four of these screwed into four of these, with a couple of these for pinspots and some other lights to go along with all of them. The problem is, I don't have a free table upon which to set them all up along with the light box...

Ahem.

As I was saying, the main feature of all of these lights (save for the pinspots) is that they've got adjustable intensity. In the case of your picture, that'd mean less intense overhead lighting, which would make the front lighting look stronger. One thing you might do is tape some kleenex or toilet paper to the overhead light... that'll diffuse it AND dim it so it won't appear so stark. edit: I just realized that's a cellphone... another option might be trying to display a white webpage.

Ditto with the front-lighting cellphone. The lantern is the most powerful thing in the room, but it's got a diffusing shade on it already!

Shadows aren't bad things... one of my favorite photos from r/animefigures recently was this one, which is nothing BUT light and shadow contrasting... but they can be distracting if not overly intentional.

Also if you can, raise your front lighting a bit. The human eye finds "horizontal" light to be weird since we don't usually see things illuminated that way.

Back in the 1930s, a man named Stanley McCandless wrote a book entitled A Method of Lighting the Stage, which went into depth on how he believed lighting for the theatre should be done. He came up with using two lights in front of the actor, offset 45 degrees in either direction from the centerline of the actor's nose, and elevated an equal amount. There would be a third light above the actor at a steep angle.

The resulting light plot looked like this,, wiht the stage result looking like this. This is something that the human eye takes to be "normal"... and, whether you were aware you were doing it or not, you've nearly replicated the McCandless Method, which is still the basic tool of lighting design for the stage. Put some soup cans or something under each front light, play around with the results! There's no rule saying you have to do it McCandless' way, either... it's just a great place to start from.

I really like what you're doing here already, by the way! I'm just... I'm just a guy who never got his master's degree in stage lighting design, and has a little bit of info to pass along that might help make things better, is all. Feel free to ignore me!

ps: I know it's a pain to do, but if you can figure out a way to not use the figma stands, that'd be a huge improvement! I do wish Good Smile would come up with some better idea for a stand...

If in the window itself would be too cold (I don't have personal experience with that), near the window plus a fairly basic grow light should work. I started some basic seeds in late September in Houston (so much warmer than you). Some are in a south facing window, and growing quite slowly. Some are a few feet away from the same window, but with a grow light over them for... about as long as we'd have sunlight in June (hours per day of light/dark). The ones under the grow light are growing beautifully.

I'm using this light in this stand. They're not actually the best pairing - the light is bigger than the stand housing, so it sticks out a bit. It all works fine, it just doesn't look good. For me, it's in a room where I don't really see it unless I'm directly tending the plants, so I don't mind, and it's cheap. Note also: The 100W on the light is it claiming to be equivalent to a 100W incandescent bulb. It's actually drawing around 23, 24W, which is how I can put it in that "maximum 40W" stand and be fine. This is much weaker than many "proper" grow lights, but since I'm using it to supplement a south facing window (rather than independently) it seems to work quite well for me.

I put most of my potted plants outside for the summer and the ones that would freeze to death, I bring inside to 'overwinter'. Some of them stay green all winter and others go dormant losing all their leaves. The plant you're looking at is tropical so I doubt it goes dormant.

You can get a small bag of potting mix at walmart or a hardware store. I've never found one that wasn't better after adding sand to it. I buy big bags of washed play sand at the hardware store. You can probably find a small bag in the fish section of the pet department that would work fine. You'll see the difference it makes when you add it to the potting mix.

Here is an example of a swing arm lamp that has both a desktop base and a clamp for table edges. $20 is not a bad price.

Pot prices vary greatly. Dollar stores around here sometimes have 6 inch pots with built in trays. A nice ceramic pot should be less than $5 and a plastic one should be about $2. I sometimes use large yogurt containers with a few holes in the bottom as temporary pots or to place in fancy pots that I don't want to fill directly with dirt.

Most regular stores and even some discount stores are way over priced on pots. Sometimes ceramic trays aren't too bad though. I often use frozen dinner trays for beneath my pots...the rectangular black ones look nicer in my opinion.

As for timers, simpler is better. If you shop around you might find it for around $5 so this price isn't out of line.

You may need to repot eventually. It's unlikely to be necessary for at least a couple of years though.