How to Make Your Own Photography Backdrops

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Tom Sapp. We're going to talk about how to make your own photography backdrops today. Now there is a couple different ways to do it. Some people do it a little less than others in terms of how much you spend. You can go into like Wal-Mart and buy a sheet and go just shopping pretty much anywhere and get, just a white sheet and put up on a wall. You can paint the wall white, you can paint the wall various colors as well. Walls are the easiest thing to do if you want to do it real quick. I have done a lot of commercial shoots where they need various different colors that I didn't have the actual roll paper for and the roll papers you can buy if you want to in different colors. You can get them 10 feet wide, 6 feet wide, you can get them at B and H or you can do the makeshift thing and make it yourself. Now I'm a do it yourselfer so I have got one here I have made. It is a brown one and what I did was basically buy the Muslin, So you can buy fabric in large sheets called Muslin you can get it at any fabric store. Usually they run about $60 is what I paid for the one that I have and they're huge. The one that I have here in my hand is actually about 10 feet wide by 12 feet but the most important thing and I had to learn from experience here is you don't use regular paint on these things you have got to stain them so stain is going to be the easiest way to do it just like you do clothes. When you think about clothes if you have ever made like tie dyed clothes things like that that is what you are going to want to do is use inks or just any kind of stain type substance or liquid and you know just get it the color that you need. If you want to use red stain you can. If you want to make a bright red one and you can also wash it a couple of times if you want to fade it and then after you get done the wrinkles if you like using narrow apertures like I usually use 2.8 when I am shooting these and try to do natural light but if you are going to be using like say studio strobes and shooting like an F 22 I like to get it so it is a little bit wrinkly. So see this, I have a bag that I just kind of take it and I bunch it up and stick it in and that will make the little ridges, little wrinkles in it so in the background it comes out looking pretty texturized, pretty nice. If you fold it so it ends up like a bed sheet like you would fold it to put it in a closet you'll have some squares in it and those squares really stand out whereas the wrinkles make it look more texturized make it look more professional and I have seen a lot of examples of people on line trying to take photos and they are just starting and they will put like a sheet on the background that they just pulled out of the closet and you'll just see a bunch of like squares in the background. It just doesn't look as professional as having that textured look to it that you would see like in a professional studio and if you do shoot it in there at an aperture 2.8 you can do 56 if you have got a long lens and get the same look. It will compress it a little bit more and blur the background out for you or you can do it in Photoshop as well if you like using Gauze and Blur but the just of it is if you want to make your own backdrop you just get basically the fabric, a large sheet of fabric and you can dye it or you can use paints on your wall. As long as you are not doing a rental. I made that mistake and you will have to redo it before you move out so you have got to think about that. But other than that this is how to make your backdrop. Tom Sapp Photography, tomsapp.com. Thank you so much."