V THE PHOTOGRAPHER
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Lighting a Seamless Background

In June, our THAT PHOTO SCHOOL assignment was to properly light a white seamless background.

The main thing I learned was that you have to flag off the lights on your seamless background, and light your subject separately. This was my stab at the project. If I could go back and do this again I would:
1) Use a cutter to take down the exposure on his pants, since they’re so light
2) Even out the white of the seamless background
Evening out the seamless would have been easier using a tether, but I could not get mine to work. :(

V-1.jpg

Overall, I’m still really happy with it!

So anyway, shooting a subject on a plain white background can be a little boring, so I wanted to experiment a bit to get something portfolio worthy. The first alternative I tried, was using a Profoto Hardbox, which allows you to create very crisp shadows. As I was taking a couple of test shots, I accidentally caught the edge of one of my quad-folds which created a shadow on my seamless. I ended up really liking it, and kept it in. Check it out!

V-2.jpg

And finally, I was super inspired by this photo from an old Aldo campaign, and decided I wanted to layer two seamlesses, and do a monochromatic set.

Aldo.jpg
V-3.jpg

Learned a lot from this project, and I think I’m getting better at using fill lights. :)

Yuvie Styles