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Quick Tip: How To Protect A Cyclorama With A Tennis Ball

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If you own a cyclorama you know that part of the job of owning such a wonderful thing is that you have to occasionally re-paint it.  (If Amazon does not shut you down first). I was visiting Stefan and Rosi from RawExchange in Germany, and they showed me a great tip. (RawExchange are my partners in the Image Manipulation Store and actually shoot many of the packages).

When you move a light-stand on a cyclorama it skids and leaves marks. If you are just before a cyclorama-re-paint it’s no biggie, but if you have just painted your surface white, it could be quite annoying.

The team’s solution was to place tennis balls on the legs of the light stands to help them slide easily with no marks.

Have to say that this is probably the best use for a Tennis ball I’ve seen.

Flash Photography – Changing The Background Color With Gels

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Here is a great tip if you are using a studio and don’t pack a bunch of backdrops. Of course, not owning many backdrops does not mean that should deprive yourself from the benefits of shooting against backdrops in multiple colors.

Photographer Neil van Niekerk suggest a simple and effective way to tap into an almost infinite about of colored backdrop by coloring them with light using gels.

Add Hand Painted Backgrounds To Your Photos In Seconds With This Digital Trick

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Some of the iconic portrait photographers, like Annie Leibovitz have a very common look for their studio portraits, they are shot against a hand painted textured backdrop. You know what I am talking about. Those gorgeous backdrops with random soft patters. Those backdrops are hand painted on canvas (just like works of art), and show great details and spectacular color.

Sadly, they are also very expensive. This is why you may want to look at creating those digitally with a pre-shot backdrop.

5 Ways To Get Creative With Seamless Background Paper

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I am a portrait and fashion photographer and the large percentage of my work is done in my studio. I love my studio, but space is limited and to achieve a good variety within my images, seamless paper rolls provide a cheap and convenient source for backgrounds.

Problem is, it all gets a bit boring when you are constantly shooting against a white seamless week after week! To add to this, I hate throwing things out so I came up with a few ideas to not only get creative with paper but to also utilise the left over scraps of leftover rolls.

My Solution For Creating Simple And Inexpensive Studio Backgrounds

Photographer Robert Mitchell (see bio below) came up with a clever solution for creating an almost infinite amount of backgrounds using nothing more than a wall and a bucket of paint. While painting and repainting takes some time, the results definitely justify the effort.

Every photographer that builds a studio or converts a room for use as a photo studio gives thought to backgrounds and backdrops. Seamless paper is available in a few widths and a multitude of colors but it’s not always interesting or appropriate and depending on what you’re shooting, seamless can be boring and ugly. The paper itself doesn’t cost that much and you can rig things to hold a roll without any serious investment in hardware, and for some, this is more than enough, and everything they need.

The Versatile Beauty Dish – My Favourite Lighting Patterns

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Most folks will be fairly familiar with the Beauty Dish and its usefulness in both fashion and general portraiture. In this tutorial I would like to share with you just how versatile I think the humble Beauty Dish can be and show you just how many lighting patterns you can create with my personal favourite light modifier.

First of all, I should describe exactly what a Beauty Dish is for those perhaps unfamiliar with the modifier. Beauty dishes are essentially large metal bowls, which typically are available in a variety of sizes such as 16″, 22″ or 27″ in diameter. They can be used with both studio strobe and speedlights with the correct speedring fittings.

Inside the dish is an internal reflector. This is a disc of metal, spaced a few inches in from the strobe. This deflects the light from the strobe and pushes the light towards the outside of the dish, ensuring that the only light hitting the subject has been reflected. This creates a very smooth, even and flattering light though this can also depend on the interior of the reflector. Beauty Dishes typically have silver or white interiors. Silver interiors are very specular and produce harder more contrasty light, whereas white interiors are softer and more even as the light inside gets more scattered before leaving the dish, reducing the specular reflections.

Build A Background Wall On Wheels

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Black and white are the default background colors for many of my photos. There are several background systems (paper, fabric, roller blinds, etc.) and I wanted to have something that is easily changeable, portable and inexpensive for those two colors.

The result is a background wall on wheels. Both sides are papered with background-wallpaper and so they are easily repaintable. By default I have one of the sides painted white and the other painted black.

Size-wise the wall is 2m high and 1.8m wide, so I have enough space for portraits and full body images. The wall stands safely on its attached furniture castors and is still very mobile in space.

How To Make a DIY Handpainted Backdrop

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With winters lasting for 6 months in Toronto, I find that outdoor shoots are put on hold for pretty much the entire time. Because of that, I try improving my studio work during the indoor hermitting season as much as possible. That way once spring kicks in I can go back to shooting outdoors at full power.

All of my previous studio work (which is limited) involved either a blank wall in my house or a blank wall in my house with a grey paper backdrop that I purchased at Henry’s for $40 CAD. This year, when I was asked to shoot an album cover, I knew it was time to figure out something a little more sophisticated. Cue in NEW BACKDROPS!

Can’t Afford High End Glass? Use Those Bokeh’ed Backdrops

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Here is an interesting product for those who want to get that magnificent Bokeh right in the studio using cheap glass. Lastolite just came up with a new series of Out Of Focus Backgrounds. This is a pretty interesting idea that “enable photographers to create the out of focus look instantly, whether in the studio or a client’s home“.

Let me explains, one of the traditional ways to separate subject from background, is to set the camera on a wide aperture (say, f/2.8 or f/1.4) and focus on a close subject while letting the farther-away background to blur and create what some call ‘A creamy bokeh’ (Bokeh is that out of focus area in the photo).

Lastolite created two sets of background that are already out of focus. One set has Summer Foliage on one side and City Lights on the other. The other set has Autumn Foliage and Seascape.

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