Shooting on White Background

duchess

I have only been doing photography for a short time. However, I read books and do research on the profession. It is still not clear from what I have read what the trick is to getting proffessional looking pictures on a white background. I know you have to light up the background, but what is the best tool to do this. The first pictures I took on white background had so many shadows arund the face and had, I almost couldn't do anything with them.

If this question has already been asked, please direct me to the thread.

Thanks

Shane422

I find it easiest to use a white seamless paper background. You have to light the background so that it is 1-2 stops brighter than the main. Any more than that and the background becomes another light source. Getting that done evenly is not always the easiest. I usually light my background with two speedlights, and use a Alienbee B400 as the main. Its also good to have some distance between your subjects and the background. I've been getting away with about 6 ft lately. I still often have to clean up the background a bit with a little dodging, or I use this trick from the dgrin tutorials section.

Art Scott

duchess wrote:

I have only been doing photography for a short time. However, I read books and do research on the profession. It is still not clear from what I have read what the trick is to getting proffessional looking pictures on a white background. I know you have to light up the background, but what is the best tool to do this. The first pictures I took on white background had so many shadows arund the face and had, I almost couldn't do anything with them.

If this question has already been asked, please direct me to the thread.

Thanks

For High Key shooting you really need a min of 3 lights...as mentioned above by Shane.....a light meter makes the work much easier. especially if using 2 different types of light sources (speed lights and Alien Bees....both strobes but not the same out put when set at corresponding levels...just fopr argument say High....on a speedlight you may have a GN of 90 and that Alien Bee could be 160..now if it were 180 that would be the 2 to 1 ration that Shane mentioned but if you starting dropping the powerelevel and have misplced your calculator it could take a ling time to get precise light measurements.....yes I am an advocate of still using a light meter as much as possible......)

Not knowing your studio set up I will say that all of the studios I have shot in used 3-4 lights min for portraits...2 0f those always being for background lighting and they all so most always shot 100% power on the background for high key work and used umbrella or other light modifiers (softboxes etc etc....) in close to the subject.....keeping the subject at least 6 ft from the background helps to keep the light reflecting back on to the subject minimal......but the effect of the relected light can be awesome if it catches hair and so forth it most of the time creates a sort of halo efftct for the separation of subject and background........

Starting to ramble .....bedtime.