Make your own backdrop

Have you ever wanted to take a portrait of someone and you want a particular color for the background?  It happens to photographers all the time.  Few professional photographers and no average hobbyist carries 20 different colors of backdrop with them.  Or do they?  If you have a white wall and some ingenuity you can make a background of many colors.  

Let me explain.  

This is a headshot of me.  Pay no attention to how bad I look or the strange expressions on my face in these shots.  I was the only model I could get cheap and on short notice.  The important thing here is the background.

None of the backgrounds were Photoshopped in any way, all the changes are strictly from the lighting.

I am just standing in front of a piece of white foam board clamped to a light stand but a white wall works even better.  A white sheet hung from a wall or draped over a pipe works in a pinch, but be aware that every wrinkle will show.  So this is just plain lighting on me and a flash on the background.  You can use a strong lamp on the background.  Nothing fancy here, but the shot is desirable because I stand out from the background.  It is clean and white.

This is what happens if you turn off the light on the background.  The white wall turns grey.  This is due to the fall-off of the light.  If I sped up the shutter speed or closed my f-stop I could make the background go to black.



But what if you don't want, black, white or grey?

Nothing changed with this photo from the first one except I laid a small piece of blue plastic called a gel, on my background light source.  In my case it was a small flash unit but if you are using a lamp, think about scarves, or a piece of colored plastic used for wrapping presents or kids Easter baskets.  Nothing changed for this shot except that i bent down and put the blue plastic on the flash.






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The results are limitless, as long as you don't run out of colored scarves or plastic,
here's one in red.

This one is green, but a very light green.  I think you get the idea, now go get your camera and practice.  If you have kids or a spouse, you won't have resort to self-portraits.

















If you have any questions about this technique or would like to know more details, contact me via e-mail, phone call, Facebook, or Twitter.  All the links are on my website.


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