How to Choose Studio Background for Photo

Video Transcript

"Hi, Rob Mitchell again for Expert Village. Next in building our studio, backgrounds. Very important, backgrounds. We've got a couple of choices. Probably the most common, which you'll see if you go into any photographic store, is the seamless paper, or no seam paper. The beauty of this is you can get them in, this is a four foot roll, you can get them in eight foot rolls, twelve foot rolls. You hang them at the back of your studio, bring the paper down. You can place the model in front of it for a head shot; you've got a perfectly clean background. You can do full length shots when you place the model on your seamless background. You don't see any seams such as corners where the floor meets the wall. It is perfectly seamless. You light it properly. Nice and even on the background, and it appears as though the model is just floating there. Which is absolutely a great thing if you're shooting fashion, shooting clothing, you don't want clutter in the background. What we're going to be doing in the next shoot is we're going to be doing headshots; we're going to be lighting for headshots so our background is very important. We could be using the four foot roll here to get a nice clean white background. That particular paper I just showed you is a super white, meaning it reflects a lot of the light back. We're not going to get any muddy gray background; it's going to be brilliant and white. We can also use colors. They come in black, greens, yellows, any particular color you want. The choice is up to you. What I use a lot for lighting, we've got here sort of a Muslim background, the white one here. We can bunch it up to give a little bit of texture, put some folds in it, and throw some lights on it to create shadows. It gives a little bit of definition, separates the model from the background so she doesn't look like she's just floating there in limbo. But the particular one that I like and you're going to laugh when you see it because it looks a little bit grungy, but wait until you see the pictures. Don't judge me yet. This is the same material, this Muslim material. I took it out in the backyard. First of all I dyed it a very light gray, took it out in the backyard, spread it on the grass, and I threw bits of paint all over it. Splatter it with different colors of paint, bits of black, greens, reds, and blues, all throughout there. Now I've pulled this out many times, people looked at it and thought oh man, you're not going to shoot me in front of that. Well, yes I am. And the reason that I really love this background is it works with absolutely any color clothing that the model is wearing. Anything from black white, reds, purples, and you've got to be really careful. If you're shooting a model who's wearing something purple, or green, or red, you've got to be careful of your background. You don't want it to clash. You don't want it to overpower the model, overpower the picture. This particular background works no matter what the girl is wearing. If you put your model about six feet in front of the background, the background become soft, diffused, it's not obtrusive. You can still have little folds in here, little bits of shadow which gives it a bit of definition, and all it does is draw your picture out. It draws the viewer's eye right to the model. You'll see exactly how well it works."