White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space

Tue , April 29th, 2008

Posted by zack
under Gear & Gadgets,Photo Resources,Technique

Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, and countless other great photographers have rocked the white background for decades. I
recently went to a huge bookstore here in Atlanta and counted the number of magazine covers shot with a simple white
background like we are going to investigate here. 87 COVERS SHOT ON WHITE OR A VARIATION OF A WHITE
BACKGROUND. Eighty-seven magazine covers at one book store. Its everywhere and it is everywhere because it is
simple and effective and makes your subjects pop. It beats the bloody hell out of any wrinkled up grey/blue/brown
muslin any day of the week. Walk into a Target store this week and look at the in-store signage. How did I learn to
shoot like this? Because this is how we shot JC Penney’s catalogue clearance images when I shot for them. Need to add
text and other artwork to a photo? A simple white background lets you do so all day long.

If I had but one backdrop to use for portraiture I would choose a simple roll of white seamless paper. With one roll of
paper you can create many options. For the rest of the week I’m going to break it down for you. We are going to look at
getting it to pop to pure white, making it various shades of grey, getting it to go black, gelling it to any color in the
rainbow, and doing very easy and quick changes in post production to further the visual options available to us when
using such a simple background.

As simple as it is, it can be easy to mess up too. I hope to help you out like other photographers have helped me along
the way.Before we get into the shooting technique for this, let’s start from the start and look at the gear and resources
needed to pull this off.
1. Space Considerations :: The more room you have the less bad words will come out of your mouth. A 20×20′ room
with 10′ or higher ceilings is a great place to start. You can do it with less but you’ll have more challenges to face and
make this more of a pain in the arse then it needs to be. Trying this in a spare bedroom with 8′ ceilings is going to drive
you mad and you’ll sound like the dad in A Christmas Story as he worked on the furnace. You can do it… you’ll just
use more cuss words doing so. A hard floor surface is desired. Plush carpeting will bring more cursing. If you are doing
this on carpet, lay down an 8′x8′ foundation of 1/2″ plywood so you have something sturdy for your subjects to stand
on.

My current studio allows me to have a space that is about 15′ wide by 40′ in length. I really wish I had 20′ in width. I
would say 80% less cuss words if my area was wider. My ceilings are about 11′ in height and I wish they were 14′ but
you do what you can with what you have. My old studio had a cyc wall that was 20′ wide by 40′ long with 14′ ceilings
and I never ever said a single bad word when lighting a set.

BTW – Cyc is short for “cyclorama”. Also known as an infinity wall. Think of it as a permanent roll of seamless paper
from floor to ceiling that can be painted over and over again. They are worth every bit of the few thousands of dollars
they cost to have built properly. You only want one built if you know for sure you will be in your space for a long time
because you’ll never want to leave it.

2. Lights :: Three lights are pretty much the minimum you are going to need for this. They’ll do everything you need to
have done for the most part. 95% of my pure white background images are shot with 3 lights. I don’t care what kind of
lights they are. 3 Alien Bees, 3 Travelites, 3 Norman heads, 3 Canon 580′s, 3 Nikon SpeedLites, whatever. I will say
that you want more power than less for much of this. You can pull it off with hotshoe flashes but you’ll use 47% more
cuss words with small flashes as opposed to more powerful strobes like Alien Bees or Dynalites etc. You can rock the
pure white with OneLight and/or two lights but if you want to make life better and your studio to be more of a PG rated
environment, go with three lights.

3. Seamless, stands, and misc. grip gear :: You are going to need to 2 solid stands to hold your 9′ wide roll of seamless
paper up. You’ll need a sturdy crossbar to go through the roll of paper that gives you at least 3 inches of room on each
side of the roll. You can use a 10′ long section of 1.5″ PVC pipe from Home Depot or the like. I then use super clamps
to attach the pole to the stands. The following links will take you to B&H.

Savage 107″ (9 feet wide) white seamless paper. :: $40 :: You don’t have to have “super white”. A light, light grey can
work as well but just plain ol’ white will do it. Try to find it locally as shipping can sometimes cost more than the
seamless. It is heavy stuff. Also note – Store your seamless paper standing up. DO NOT store your seamless laying flat
on the ground. If you store it flat you will get ripples through the whole roll eventually.

Avenger 10.8′ light stands or the 12.8′ version. :: $78 ea. for the 10′ and $84 ea. for the 12′ :: You’ll need two stands to
hold your seamless.

Matthews Super clamps (you need two of them) :: $27 each.

OR… Just buy a background support kit like this Impact set-up. For $99 you get 2 stands, a crossbar that fits on the
stands, and a bag to carry it in. I prefer using stronger stands, super clamps, and metal cross bars but a kit will work for
you. You get what you pay for though. Cheaper support kits are going to give you more problems. Pick up two
sandbags ($22 each) to help keep the whole thing grounded.
1 or 2 A clamps :: $4 each :: You need these to hold the paper on the roll once you have rolled it out. Get a good roll of
gaffer tape as well. Don’t be so ghetto that you cheap out and use duct tape. Have a little dignity and use some good
industry standard tape!

3. Cutters / Flags / Gobos and tile board :: When we set up to go with a pure white background in our photo we want 2
lights on the background and we don’t want that light to spill on to our subject directly from the strobes. We need some
sort of cutter/flag to keep the subject from being lit by those lights hitting the white seamless. You can score a 4×8
sheet of 1/4″ foam core down the vertical center to stand them up. I used those for a long time but they fall over easily.
I have now moved to using 2 bi-fold doors that I bought at Home Depot for $20 each. I painted one side of each set
white. You can use barn doors on your strobes or whatever. You just want to make darn sure that the light from the
strobes hitting the background DOES NOT directly hit your subject. Using tall cutters like the bi-fold doors makes
things much easier on you.

Tile Board :: $11 per 4×8′ sheet at Home Depot. This stuff rocks. This is going to give you a nice white floor and a
reflection under your subject. You need a few sheets of it. Check out the photo below to get the exact stock number.
You can find it at Lowes as well. You’ll find these either in the area where they keep paneling or in the bath fixtures
department as it is used to wall in showers and bathrooms. You want the pure white smooth kind. They have some that
has a bit of a pebbled texture to it. Don’t bother with that stuff. It is brown on the back side which actually photographs
beautifully as a background when thrown a bit out of focus. Its a floor! Its a background! Make the most out of what
you have!

Here is a photo of the basic set up for going pure white.

And here is the tile board you want to get…

Here is the Super Clamp attached to a light stand and holding the cross bar.
Setting up the seamless is going to be the biggest pain in the arse for you. Get it on the stands about face level and roll
it out to the floor until it starts to roll back on itself on the floor. Roll out as much slack as you can but don’t allow it to
wrinkle or crease. Attach an “A” clamp to the roll and crossbar to keep it from rolling out any more. Extend one stand
up a bit. Then go to the other side and extend that up a bit. Then go back to the other side and extend that up a bit.
Rinse and repeat until you get the roll all the way to the ceiling. Having another person makes it MUCH easier. You’ll
make sailors blush if you are doing this on your own. It could be an olympic sport really.

Get on a ladder and let out some more paper from the top and pull it out toward and lightly tape it to the floor. Let out
some more paper and pull it back some more. Crap. Not only is it a pain to do, it is a pain to describe. If any of you
can’t wrap your head around the set-up, I’ll shoot a little video on it or something.

Here is the “A” clamp holding the paper from rolling out any more.
DO NOT just let your seamless sit up there without being clamped. When that stuff starts to unroll on it’s own, you’ll
just want to jump off a bridge at that point. Trust me. I know.

One last thing on gear notes here…

Lens Choice :: When you start shooting into the background when you have lit up like a roman candle you will find
that one lens may perform better than another in this situation. When you light that white background you are
essentially shooting INTO a very large light source. You can run into all sorts of flare and chromatic aberration (CA)
problems with some lenses. I know that my Nikon 35mm f2 and my Nikon 105mm f2 lenses perform really well for
this. My Nikon 50mm 1.8 looks like butt. Ugly butt. It is worthless when shooting on a pure white background due to
flare and CA and it adds a big ugly purple spot right in the dead center of the photo. A Nikon 50mm 1.4 holds up much
better. My 80-200 f2.8 also looks horrible. My 85 f1.8 does “ok” but it isn’t that great. You’ll just need to test a few of
your lenses for this. You may find that a zoom works better at one end of the focal length than the other.

That wraps up Part 1 of this tutorial.

Next, I will be talking about setting up the lights and finding your exposure without a light meter. A light meter sure
does help for this but I rarely, if ever, pull the light meter out simply because I have shot this stuff so many times I have
my formula worked out.
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2 :: Setting Lights & Exposure
Thu , May 1st, 2008
Posted by zack
under Gear & Gadgets,Photo Resources,Technique

We are now going to look at setting up a simple headshot on a pure white seamless background, or, “BG” for short
during this tutorial.Click here for Part 1 of this tutorial.

The philosophy I have when shooting on pure white is that I want to light the BG and the subject independently from
each other. Meaning; The light on the subject isn’t making a change to the exposure on the background and the light on
the background isn’t making a change to exposure on the subject. As I talked about before, those cutters on the sides of
the set are key to making this happen. The next consideration is keeping the subject a fair distance away from the
background as well. In this first example my subject, Thomas, is about 11 feet away from the white seamless hanging
behind him. The closer he gets to the background, the more likely it is that light reflecting off of the seamless is going
to add exposure to him in the final image. The further I get my subject away from the seamless, the less light coming in
from the background will get to him. I’ll talk more about that specifically in a bit.

For the sake of being as technical as possible for this tutorial I have wiped the dust off of my light meter and put it back
into use. I rarely, if ever, pull it out when setting up this type of set simply because I’ve done it so often and I know
what I’m looking for when I chimp. If you have a flash meter already, good for you! Pull it out and put it in the incident
mode. If not, I’m going to give you examples of the visual clues I am looking for when I’m shooting so I know how to
adjust my lights without using a flash meter.

For this set up I have two lights on the background. One on each side. I also have barn doors on these lights in addition
to using the bi-fold cutters. Since my ceiling in here is so low and those white walls are so close to the set I use the barn
doors to flag light from the BG lights off of the ceiling and walls. The light on camera left is pointing just left of center
of the BG. Camera right light is just right of center of the BG. I want an even spread of light across the BG so that if I
were to take meter readings from the left edge to the right edge of the seamless, I would get identical readings from
edge to edge. If your BG is within a quarter stop from edge to edge you’ll be fine. If your BG has more than half a stop
difference from edge to edge, position your lights in such a way to even that exposure out. If you don’t have a light
meter, eyeball the dang thing and go for it.

For those of you new to lighting I am only going to be talking about exposure in terms of f stops. Shutter speed controls
ambient light exposure and aperture (f stop) controls flash exposure. The ambient light in this scenario means nothing
to me since I’m lighting everything with flash so my shutter speed is always going to be near my sync speed of 250th
of a second. If you don’t know your sync speed you’ll have to RTFM. If you don’t know what RTFM is then you’ll
have to Google that and ROFL. If you are lost on ROFL… how did you even get to this web page? Colon right
parenthesis.

Also, these are always shot at my lowest ISO setting so that I have the cleanest images. No need to shoot this stuff at
high ISO settings especially if you have some decent power coming from your strobes. If you are doing this with
hotshoe flashes there can be occasions you need to up your ISO a bit.

For the subject I have one light source. For this particular shot I’m using a Westcott 50″ Apollo softbox. The light
inside of the softbox is set to 100 w/s (watt seconds). For the pure white BG it doesn’t really matter what kind of
modifier you use. Like I said, I’m lighting my subject independently from the BG so I choose my modifier based on the
kind of light I want on the subject. You can use straight flash, an umbrella, a grid spot, a beauty dish, etc, etc. Actually,
my favorite these days is a beauty dish. I just love that thing but for this, I chose a big softbox.

From my meter I’m getting a reading on my subject of f8 from that softbox (main light). To make that white BG pop I
know that I need to have the BG at least 1.5 stops hotter than the subject. My target then is to get the BG reading to be f
11.5 because my main light on the subject is f 8. I’m going to expose for the subject at f 8 once I shoot a frame. I don’t
really want the BG to be any more than 1.5 stops hotter than the subject’s reading. You’ll see why in the examples
below. f 8 on the subject and f 11.5 on the BG is my standard set up. You can set the ratio anyway you want it. If your
main is f 2.8 then you want the reading on your BG to be f 4.5. If you get f 5.6 on your subject then you want the BG to
be at f 8.5. Nerd note – If the EXIF data is still in these images and you’re reading it you’ll see I actually exposed at f 9.
My meter is about 1/3 of a stop off from my camera.

Let’s look at a properly exposed image first ::

In the image above I have a nice white background, no significant amount of flare coming back into the lens, no
chromatic aberration (CA) around the edges or in the hair, a good exposure on Thomas, and I’m getting just a bit of
“wrap” on the shadowed side of his face.

For that “back of head” reading I took my meter and placed it at the back of his head and pointed it toward the white
seamless and took a reading. This is measuring the amount of light coming back to the subject from the BG. The more
light coming back, the more wrap, and possibly more flare, you are going to have on your subject. That “wrap” is seen
as a highlight on the camera left side of his face. That is coming from the light reflecting off of the white seamless.
Some folks HATE wrap and work to eliminate it. Some folks like to have more of it. Personally I go both ways.
Country AND Western.

There are times I want it eliminated. Maybe I want a really deep shadow on the side of the subject’s face. Lighting
wrapping in from the back would fill that shadow in too much. Another example of the need to eliminate the light
wrapping around your subject is when you are shooting someone wearing pure white. I want to keep a very clean
separation of white on white. We’ll see that coming up in a minute. Sometimes I love to have more wrap because it
accentuates the subject’s facial features. Most of the time though I’m fine with just a bit of it. The wrap above is
something I won’t say cuss words about and I won’t lose any sleep tonight because of it.

If you want less wrap, move your subject further away from the BG but keep the same 1.5 stop exposure ratio from
subject light to BG light. If you want more wrap, move your subject closer to the BG while still maintaining the 1.5
stop exposure ratio.
For those of you without a flash meter here are some examples showing you when your BG lights are over or under
exposed. These are shown with the idea of you have a good exposure from your main light on your subject. Find that
exposure first by turning off your BG lights and shooting a series of images of your subject with just the main light on.
Remember, we are lighting the subject independently from the BG. If you have this set up correctly then you can take a
shot at the proper exposure of your subject with the BG lights off and then with them on and your subject will remain
properly exposed in both images with the exception of some wrap coming in from the BG when those lights are turned
on. Make sense? No? Shoot pictures with your BG lights off and find the right exposure on your subject from the main
light. Then turn on your background lights and adjust the power of those up or down to get a clean white BG.

Here is an example of when your BG gets too hot and starts giving you problems.

I had set my main light on my subject and got a reading of f 8 from it. With my BG lights cranked all the way up to full
power I’m now getting so much light off of that BG that it added a stop to the meter reading of my subject. I suspect
that the face of my softbox was even acting as a reflector to help add to that extra stop of light coming in the front.
Looking at the image above it is pretty evident that the BG lights are set too high in power. Look at all the flare coming
in over his shoulder on the camera left side of the frame and look at the overall loss in contrast in the image. I talked in
the previous post about some lenses work better than others. My 50mm 1.8 lens shoots images that look like this on a
properly exposed set. So if you are dead sure confident that your light ratios are correct and you get that much flare and
loss of contrast, try another lens.

Here is an image with the BG underexposed.

There is nothing wrong with the image above here. In fact, you may want some density in your BG from time to time
and we are going to talk about that in the next part of the tutorial. BUT… we are talking about setting your BG
exposure properly to get a PURE WHITE background in your image and that BG ain’t white. If that is your image and
you want it white, the curse words show up in post production. If this is what you are getting then you simply need to
up the power settings of your background lights.

Two additional things to look at in this under exposed BG image :: Notice the lack or wrap coming in from the BG and
how much darker the shadow on the camera left side of his face is. Also notice that my lights aren’t set to give me a
dead even exposure across the width of the BG there. One side is a bit hotter than the other. Each light is set exactly to
the same power setting but the camera left side is a bit hotter than the camera right side. This is a visual indication that I
need to change the position and/or direction of my BG lights so I’m getting even light across the BG. It isn’t that big of
difference here. But it is noticeable and there are times when I want density in that BG and I want it to be perfect from
edge to edge in continuous tone. Again, we’ll talk about that in the next part of the tutorial.

Once you nail your exposure and everything is set correctly, you can shoot someone wearing a black shirt on a white
background and have them switch to a white shirt on a white background and shoot the same exact exposure and
maintain separation.
Let’s take a look at a series of images with the lights in different states of being on or off.

See that second image in the series where there is a tad bit of light hitting the front of Thomas? That is light coming off
of the BG, hitting the ceiling, and adding a slight touch of exposure to the front. If I had taller ceilings and / or my
ceiling was black, I would have more of a silhouette there. I’m seriously considering painting my ceiling black but I
haven’t decided if I really want to stay in the space beyond my lease. I want a cyc wall again damn it and I’m not going
to build one here! Anyway……

Also notice the “all lights off”. I wasn’t shooting in pitch black but an exposure of f 9 @ 200th of a second at ISO 100
made a black frame because the studio is not that dark but not bright enough to have any ambient exposure come into
the final frames I’m shooting. If I had some really hot spot lights on the BG or a bright window near my set we may see
a little something in that image but not much. Once those strobes fire it would kill that kind of ambient light. So
changing your shutter speed all up and down here doesn’t matter. Just set to your sync speed and adjust exposure on
your camera by aperture only. You further change exposure by changing power settings on your lights…. but to
reiterate. At camera level… set to your sync speed and just adjust f stops.

So that’s a basic headshot. You don’t have to have a roll of seamless for this application. Any old white or off white
wall will do. Let’s look at a full length next. I’m going to cry 7 tears and say 3 or 4 cuss words as I visually take you
back to my last studio with the big cyc wall. That thing was bigger than my house. Developers came in and bought the
place up and I can have it again in a few years at 3 or 4 times the cost per square foot once they pimp the place out and
do stupid things to it. Like… Bring it up to code and stuff and take the lead out of the water.

I pull this off in the new space pretty easy until I have a band of 4 or more in front of me and I’m restricted to the 9′
width of white. It can be done with only moderate cursing. I’ve shot a family of 7 on a 9′ seamless before. For now let’s
look at just shooting a full length of one person. Here is the back of the set.
This is what the back of the set looks like. Notice that straight shadow line the bi-folds are making. I keep my subject in
“the shade” of the bi-fold doors so to speak. Also note that I hang the tile board out into the BG light area just a bit. The
BG lights blow that little edge out so it isn’t seen in the final image and I don’t have to go into Photoshop to remove the
hair line it creates if I don’t have it hanging out in the BG light.

Here is the front of the set.

Note that without that tile board, the white floor area is grey. Getting a subject standing on white paper and shooting a
full length shot so that the floor and the BG are all white is a pain in the arse. You can do it but it’s a different way of
lighting that I just don’t do. Call me lazy but $20 worth of tile board makes life easy. And no… those Home Depot
work lights in the back are not being used on this set. This is three lights firing. Two on the background and one on the
subject.

Let’s add a subject and a big industrial fan.

I show the image above to give you another glimpse of what the floor would look like without the tile board. It would
be grey right up to the shadow line the cutters are creating from the BG lights. The tile board acts like a mirror in that
you are seeing a reflection of the white BG in it.

Here is an image straight out of camera with only adjustments being made to color and contrast.
Clean. Simple. Effective. Done right on set and in camera so I don’t have to cuss like a sailor in post production. Notice
the good separation of the white dress on the white background. Notice the nice little wrap on the camera right side of
her face. I really like the wrap here and would not have worked to eliminate it. It was just enough to have some wrap
but not enough that I lost the edge separation of the dress.

That wraps up Part 2 of the tutorial. Thanks to Thomas for being my exposure subject today and thanks to ya’ll for the
comments and links and all that so far! Once I finish this tutorial I’ve got something kind of cool planned for all of you.
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2b :: Full Length With OneLight
Sat , May 3rd, 2008
Posted by zack
under Gear & Gadgets,Photo Resources,Technique
I felt challenged today to see if I could shoot a full length portrait on a plain old white seamless background with a
single battery powered light source. There is this thing I do with barebulb flashes that blows the background to white
and I use an adjoining wall near the subject to catch light from the bare bulb to bounce back to light the subject’s face.
The problem with trying to do a full length with a single light source is dealing with the light stand getting in the way.
Positioning it out of the frame is a pain. You say four letter “f” words (like film) trying to keep the light stand out of the
way and lighting the walls and trying to keep light from the flash off of the (edit – I meansubject).

The challenge I gave myself today was to shoot without a light stand. I figured I would try placing the bare bulb flash
on the ground behind my client and use those bi-fold cutter doors as reflectors to catch the light from the flash and
bounce it back to the front of the subject. I taped the Sunpak 120J and Pocket Wizard with white tape to further conceal
the rig in case I was in the frame. The challenge was to not have to remove anything in Photoshop.Here is the taped
rig…
Here is the result…
Not bad really. A little flare around the ankles that is giving me a color shift on the legs. I can live with that and “fix” it
if needed. Better than trying to remove light stands from photos. Here’s another shot with the same lighting scenario…
It was a slight PITA keeping separation of her light hair on the white BG. Just a hair of the “fill” slider in Lightroom
helped bring the exposure of her face up. Here is wider shot showing a bit of the bi-fold doors acting as reflectors…
I was out of time so I didn’t try the same scenario with the tile board. I’ll try that another time.

There is another way of doing this with a single light source but you need more power than four double “A” batteries
and a pretty dang large light source. I’ll shoot one of those when I get back from my week teaching OneLight’s in
California.
Speaking of that, I have to be at the airport in seven hours. I’ll be working on the next part of this seamless tutorial on
the plane. On a side note… Fellow photographer and all around amazing guy, Troy Stains, stopped by today while we
were shooting. I have to share this image I shot of him. He’s pimp. This was part of our shooting for the OneLight
DVD coming out this summer.
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 3 :: From White To Black.
Thu , May 8th, 2008
Posted by zack
under Gear & Gadgets,Photo Resources,Technique

If you are just joining us, this is part three in a four or five part tutorial about the many uses of white seamless as a
background material. You can catch up by reading part 1, part 2, and part 2b.

We’ve taken our white seamless BG and made it pure white. The task set before us now is to get a few more visual
options out of that white seamless paper or simple white wall we are shooting against.

When I got my first studio space I had few resources to fill it up with backgrounds and stuff that studios should
have. The very first thing I bought was a roll of white seamless paper. I had to start using it with two lights. One on
the subject and one on the background. That’s all well and good but I needed to have the ability to get as many looks
out of that one background. These are some of the simple and effective techniques I still use to get some different
looks from a single background.

The first thing you can do is simply turn the background lights off.
The image above is the same exact photo except for the fact that I turned the BG lights off. I shot one with the lights
on. Then one with the lights off. Same settings on my main light and same settings on my camera. Your white BG is
now a medium grey.

Here is a full length shot with the tile board removed.

I removed the tile board because it can be a bit difficult to get it to blend seamlessly when you are lighting the BG. It
can be done you just have to finesse your light and shooting angle to the point where you no longer see the edges of the
tile board on the floor and maintain a consistent tone of grey while still picking up a bit of reflection under your
subject. Currently I don’t have an example of that on hand. I’ll dig for one in the archives and post it when I wrap this
tutorial up.
If you can wrap your head around things like inverse square law and feathering your light then you can begin to make
that BG any shade of grey from black to light grey.

Inverse square law is an equation that talks about math stuff about how light falls off over distance. I’m a
photographer. I like pictures. I don’t like physics. Inverse square law to me is like that quote about electricity that I’ve
heard before… “I don’t know how electricity works but I use it everyday.”

If you double your distance from flash to subject, you lose 75% of the light. To me it seems like if you double distance
then you lose half of your light but some dudes and some ladies (probably more dudes than ladies though) figured out
that is not the case. You double distance from flash to subject you lose 75% of the light. Not 50%.

In Myth Busters type of science that means when you double distance you lose 2 stops of light. If you double one foot
that means you lost two stops of light at the two foot mark. If you double 20 feet… you lose two stops at the 40 foot
mark.

Let me say this now though… Before any of you get on here with your Texas Instruments graphing calculators to show
me where I’m wrong on this… Take it to DPReview and fight it out there with the other measurebators. I don’t
care! Like I said, this is some Myth Busters kind of science explanations.

With a point light source like a straight flash it looks like this…
From f22 to f16 that is 7 inches. From f5.6 to f4 that is 3.5 feet. If your subject was standing where the f22 tick mark
on the wall is and the white seamless BG was over there by the 5.6 tick mark then by the time you expose properly for
the subject at f22 then your BG would be (16, 11, 8, 5.6) FOUR stops under exposed from your subject.

Here’s the basics that a public school educated guy like me can understand. If you get your subject some distance away
(like 10 feet let’s say) from the BG and your light source really close to the subject (like 1 or 2 feet away) then once
you properly expose for the subject…. the light falling off toward the BG falls off to the point that your BG can be 2 or
3 stops under exposed from the subject. The more you under expose the BG the darker it gets.

Again… The larger your ratio of exposure is from your subject to BG the darker the BG gets. The smaller the ratio
gets, the lighter the BG.

Huh? What? Yeah, I know. It looks like this without any use of Photoshop.
I’m going to post that same photo right after this explanation…

For these two images I kept the subject the same distance from the BG. He was about ten feet from the wall there. For
the image on the left the softbox was about 5 feet away from him. Exposure on him was f2 or something. Then I
moved it in really really close. Just outside of the frame. Once I closed down my aperture to compensate for the light
being much closer to him, the light ratio between his face and the wall was now a larger ratio thus making the BG
darker.
Still don’t get it? Reading my explanation over again won’t help much because I think it confuses me as well so let me
try to sum it up another way. All you engineers out there are laughing your butts off at me because this stuff is
elementary. Like I said, I went to public school.

Get your subject about 10 feet off of a wall and get your light source 7 or 8 feet away from your subject in a position
that light is hitting your subject AND your background. Make a proper exposure for the light hitting your subject and
look at the white BG. It will be a lighter shade of grey.

Keep your subject right there and more your light in really, really close to your subject. Like one foot away (just
outside of your frame). You have now changed the exposure so you are going to have to stop down your aperture until
you have a proper exposure on your subject. Once you have the proper exposure on your subject, that white BG will
now be a darker shade of grey than image you shot before with the light 7 or 8 feet away.
If you are reading this and don’t get it… Get off your arse and go shoot it. You’ll see it pretty quickly.

You can further eliminate light falling on the BG to get the BG to go darker and darker still until you just “blow it to
black” as I like to say. Or, you make dark with light. I typically do this with feathering my light and getting my
subject even further away from the background.

When you “feather” a light you are positioning your light in such a way that it isn’t pointing directly at your
subject. Instead, it is pointing a little bit away from subject yet not pointed so far away that you are no longer lighting
your subject. You are just wanting the subject to catch the feathered edge of light coming out of your modifier. Point
that light AWAY from the BG yet still getting some on your subject.

If you tweak your feathered light just right and have a good distance from your BG then you can take that white
seamless (or just about any other color of BG) and it will become black.

Here is a four light set.

Two lights on the BG, one light with a grid to light his arm, one light zoomed in to light his face. Here is what it looks
like on white…
Remember how I talked about my philosophy in all of this is I light my subject independently from my BG? With my
lights on my subject set up properly, those lights aren’t adding any exposure to my BG. So if I turn the BG lights off
and just use that tight grid and a zoomed Vivitar 285 I get this…
I did NOT change the white background out for a black one! I pinky promise! I just kept that grid and that zoomed
light positioned in a way that none of that light hit the BG. NOTE – I’m staying at my sync speed on my shutter speed
to make sure I’m killing any and all ambient light falling on the BG. Shutter speed controls ambient light. Even though
there was light in the studio when I was shooting, I was shooting at f8 at 250th of a second or there about so I wasn’t
exposing any ambient light in these images with black backgrounds.
For the image above she was about 15 to 16 feet away from the BG. I had a big softbox pointing just in front of
her. Enough for the feathered edge to light her. Then I had a second light add a bit of a side light for separation
making sure that the side light did not hit the background.

Grid spots are awesome. You can use those things to keep light off of any BG you may be using like this…
Grid spots have a small feathered edge of light. You can point the main circle of light in front of your subject and just
get their face into that feathered edge and it looks like this…
You can grid a subject again, add a background light pointing toward your subject and get this…
You can take a big ol’ softbox, move your subject away from the BG as much as possible (like 15 feet or so), under
expose the whole thing just a bit and get this…

Take it light grey…

Take it darker…

Set your BG lights to a low power setting and get them evenly positioned on the BG and match the BG exposure with
the subject exposure and get a very even tone of grey through an image…
Position your light in just the right spot where you get just a bit of separation from dark shirt or hair to a darker BG…
Keep the light on your subject but OFF of your white BG so that the BG goes black. Then double or triple stack some
colored gels on your BG lights and set them to a fairly low power setting and you can now add color to your white
BG…
IF you let the clean white light from the subject light hit the BG when you are trying to gel it to a color, then you are
going to contaminate that gelled color back there and you’ll lose the saturation of the color you are trying to achieve. I
used a grid spot in the image above to keep light just on the subject and off of the BG. I kept him far enough away
from the BG that the red light from the BG didn’t wrap around him and give me some funky color shift on the subject.

White. Grey. Black. Red. Blue. Whatever. One background. Many options.

The next tutorial will be about what we can do with some of these images in post production. I’ll show you things I do
in 30 to 60 seconds of time that changes things up even more. After that I’ll post a few different lighting techniques for
lighting your subject on the white seamless. Then I’ll have a post where I’ll be open to questions in the comment
section and I’ll cover the questions already in the comment section now.

White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 4 :: Simple Changes In Post Production.

Wed , May 14th, 2008
Posted by zack
under Gear & Gadgets,Photo Resources,Technique
If you are just joining us, this is part four in a multi part tutorial about the many uses of white seamless as a background
material. You can catch up by reading part 1, part 2, part 2b, and part 3.

For part four we are going to look at making simple changes to our photos in post production. We are going to change
the composition of our photos shot on pure white or pure black. We will also look at a way to add some color back into
the background on the images shot on pure white.

The first thing we are going to do is change our composition. When I’m shooting on a pure white or pure black
background, I shoot 95% of those images vertically. I fill the frame with my subject as much as I can. I want to
maximize the image area they take on the sensor of my camera so that I have more options for enlarging the photo later
if I want. If I want a lot of negative space in the final photo, I’ll add that in Photoshop later because it is easy to create
white or black space and still have a full frame of the subject. Imagine the area of your camera’s sensor for a moment
with the photo above on it as it is captured…
That is a lot of dead space thrown away on your chip. You can maximize the captured resolution of your subject by
filling the frame.
There are two simple ways of expanding your photo to change the composition. You can change the canvas size or you
can use the crop tool. I prefer the crop tool because it lets me visualize the new composition I’m trying to create. For
the example below I want to deliver the vertical full frame shot to the client and I want to deliver a horizontal shot as
well. I’m going to keep them set to the same dimensions by locking in my aspect ratio then flipping the width and
height numbers. See the photo below.
The crop tool options can be blank if you want so you can free form a crop. Here are the step to expanding it.

1. Make sure the photo is a locked “background” layer.

2. Set the BG color swatch to pure white.

3. Select the crop tool and pull it out over the image. It will not pull out beyond the edges of the photo. Once you hit an
edge of the photo LET GO of the mouse button. Some bounding box tick marks will show up on your crop rectangle.

4. Grab one of those bounding box tick marks and begin to pull the crop out past your original image.

5. Once you have the composition you want, hit enter or return to apply the crop. Since your BG swatch is set to white
it will become the color of whatever is beyond your original image after it is cropped. Its magic and stuff!
From looking at the next image, you would think I have a massive studio space.
This is how it was done.
Again, the original image was shot vertically to get the most bang for the buck out of my sensor…
We can do the same thing with images shot on a PURE black background.
Going through the same steps as above, I have now just changed the BG color swatch to black instead of white. I have
also moved the light source around a bit.
I made a selection around the light then used the move tool to drag it around. With the BG swatch still set to black, it
doesn’t make a “hole” in the photo when you move it.
Here again is the final frame after about 20 seconds of work in Photoshop.
That’s the simple simple stuff. Now we’ll add just one more layer to the pure white image to change it up a bit more…
I sit with my clients and walk them through a series of changes. I let them know they are getting an image shot
vertically but with some simple changes it can go to a larger vertical image for a concert poster or it can go to a
horizontal image for a promo card or CD artwork. Here is another thing I show my clients that can change the overall
look of the original image. Let’s make a square crop like we are doing CD artwork or something. Here is the original
image as shot in camera.
I’ve cropped the image to a square, turned the image into an unlocked layer, and added a new layer underneath the
image. I’m going to be making a radial gradient fill on the new layer UNDER the photo.
Turn the photo layer off and select the new layer you made under it. I’ve made my gradient fill and stretched it out a
bit. I want a soft white under my subject.
I go back to the photo layer and select it and turn it back on. Then I change the layer blending mode to “multiply”.
Anything that is pure white will drop out and the color from behind will show through.
It looks like this.
You can change the color, density, and saturation of this type of gradient fill with levels, curves, hue/saturation, etc.
Here is a change up to the bottom layer with hue/saturation.
Here is the image with this change.
This isn’t the way to just drop a subject into a whole new location. You have to get into some layer masking and a few
more steps to do something like that. These are just some simple steps to show you how to change things up a bit for
images you want to make for your clients or promotional images you need to make for yourself. You can create the
perfect amount of negative space to add logos, text, etc. If you are into textures you can then start adding those into
some of these steps as well. Using the multiply mode on white backgrounds opens up new possibilities for you. Note –
It doesn’t work the same on images with a black background.
For the next post, I’ll show a few lighting options you can have when shooting on pure white backgrounds. After that
I’ll have a post asking for questions you may have. I’ll also be going through all the comments on this tutorial so far
and answering those questions in one single post.

Then we are going to have a contest! If you are starting to shoot this stuff or have been, you can now begin adding your
images to theSeamless & Cyc Flickr pool I have started. Let’s see how creative you get. I’ve filled up the pool with my
visual pollution to get it started. You add the rest. I’ll have prizes for first, second, and third place. I’ll give you details
on it coming up soon. Add your images that have been shot with any of the techniques we have discussed here when
using a simple white background. If you are just using a white wall to start you can post those as well.

White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 5 :: Wrap up, Questions, & Contest!

Sun , June 1st, 2008
Posted by zack
under Photo Resources,Technique

This is the final part in the white seamless tutorial. If you are just joining this blog, you can find parts one through
four listed here. I wanted to end this tutorial with just a few more thoughts on lighting your subject so that you have a
few more tricks in the bag.
We have talked about those bi-fold doors on the side of the set to block the background (BG) lights from illuminating
the subject (see part 1). You can also use those as big reflectors if you paint them white. Mine are painted white on one
side and I keep the natural wood color on the other side so that they can at times be used as a background. Take a look
at these two images. These were shot using only the BG lights.

To bring light around to the front, I positioned the BG lights in such a way that they were not illuminating the subject. I
pulled one of the bi-fold doors and a tall piece of foamcore around to the front of Stephanie to act as large reflectors.
Those picked up the light coming off of the BG and reflected it back on to the subject. To do this well, you have to
bring those reflectors in really close to your subject. They usually end up in my shot but they are an easy thing to
remove.
Still shot the image vertically as you can see so that I can maximize the size of my subject on my image sensor. I
simply made a marquee selection around the reflectors, made sure my BG swatch in Photoshop was set to white, and
hit the delete key. Whatever is deleted goes to your BG swatch color. Easy peesy! Why did I use one bi-fold door and
one foamcore? Um, it is just what I had on hand at that moment. You can use one or the other or whatever. I just want
you to be thinking about that background being a large light source that you can then grab some of that light coming off
of it and reflect it somewhere else if you need to do so.
Here is another shot using the same technique. I like the light that it produces and I like the catchlights.

And, as always, leave a little room around an edge for alternate crops.
But wait! There’s more! My friend I shoot weddings with, Marc Climie, built two 4′x8′ frames out of 1×2′s and
covered them with ripstop nylon. They hang out in the studio and for the following shot I used one 4×8 panel on each
side of the frame as main lights on the subject. I shot a light through each one. So that would be four lights. Two on the
subject. Two on the background.
I’ve also used this exact same lighting setup for larger product work…
For the image above, nailing the ratio of exposure on the subject to the background was critical because I needed to
retain some amount of density in the clear acrylic. It took some time getting that set but once it was set, I could move
other displays in and out of the set and keep the same lighting and exposure. Also note that it is great shooting on white
because you can shoot mulitple angles of the same thing and place them on to one photo quickly and easily. For this
type of application set your camera on a tripod so that your angle and perspective to the subject remains constant.

Speaking of product, all of this stuff I’ve been going on and on and on about lately works for just about anything…
You can take a sheet of that tile board and put it on top of a table for small product work. I have shot hundreds of small
products using this set up. As always, I fill the frame and the expand as needed. For the image above I just used the BG
lights.

I’m a big fan of grid spots and I use them a lot when shooting on white. I also include elements of my set into my
photos as well…
For the image above I used a 10 degree grid to light my brother’s face and I composed my frame to include elements of
the set. If you or your client do not want these elements all you have to do is set your BG swatch color to white in
Photoshop and select and delete areas or use the eraser tool to remove them.

Again, I’m a fan of the grid. This is legendary hip hop king, 8 Ball, from Memphis…
Well, that is pretty much it. That is just about everything I do with a roll of white seamless paper. It seems as though
this has been good for many of you. Thank you for taking the time to go through it.

I am now open to questions! Leave them as a comment here. I will also go through the other seamless posts and pull
out questions I haven’t had a chance to reply to yet. I’ll let the questions come in for a week or so and then I’ll make a
post with all of them together with the answers.