Learn the 3 ways to photograph a white background. In this video, I share some advice to get the most out of your white background photography. There are really 3 (or 4) ways I recommend using your white background for photography. The first is just as a white background, of course. Next is not lighting the background for a neutral tone. Then using patterns for effects and gels for color effects.
Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.
Three ways you can photograph a white backdrop coming up. Hey, this is Scott Wyden Kivowitz, a storyteller with a camera and talking about all the things photographers like you and I are thinking about. In this video, we’re going to be talking about three ways that you could photograph with a white background. White background are probably some of the most diverse backdrops that you could have as a photographer. Right now I have one light in at that backdrop, one light that is illuminating that white fabric, that one light is kind of down by my, but aimed towards the backdrop is done. The light stand about two feet off the ground. Maybe it’s got one parabolic reflector and it’s aimed directly at that backdrop. What you see right now is just the modeling light right now. If I was to make a photo, a headshot, for example of this scene, you would see the white backdrop.
You would see it white because it’s being illuminated. Here’s one of the things that you can do to a white backdrop to change its appearance by simply turning off that backdrop light, that light that you have. On the backdrop, but by keeping everything else you now are making that backdrop gray, that means that you can turn a white backdrop into a gray backdrop without buying a gray backdrop. Another thing that you could do is simply take something like let’s say a funky hat and mounted in front of your light and sort of make a scrim some sort of effect on top of using shadows. Think of it like hand puppets before your backdrop. Now there are actual things that create these effects that if you don’t, if you don’t want to use it, had you can actually buy one for your strobe, but otherwise you can get in a foil which is this sort of black tin foil, black aluminum foil, and you can cut it into different shapes and it can take the heat, whereas a hat won’t be able to take the heat for too long.
Last but not least is the ability to change colors to whatever color that you want. These are from MagMod. These are colored gels for a small stroke. For a small flash like the Nikon SB800 as SB900 and the LumoPro LP180, I’m just showing these. For example, MagMod is actually coming out with larger ones. Their kickstarter project just finished and now making larger ones for the big strobes. There’s a lot of brands, rosco makes them and so on, but these are gels. This is a blue, it’s a. it’s actually a gel for cooling down a scene if it’s too warm, so this is actually one of those and you can see just by holding an over. Everything that’s through it is now. Cooler is now is now cooler, but if I hold it in front of the light, it’s also going to make the backdrop blue, like that blue tint. You can also make it green. We can make it red.
Now there are many types of colored gels and gels for special effect. There are ones for color temperature, the ones that I have or for color temperature, but you can actually get one, like I just said, for actual effects, which means the balloon would be more enhanced and the orange would be more enhanced to actually create those colors with the light. Instead of it being subtle, you can get ones from Rosco that are just sort of these thin materials and you can rubber band around the front of your light and it’ll take the heat or ice suggest picking up the ones that are going to be out any day. Now. So there you have it. There are three things that you could do with a white backdrop. One is you can leave it white, so four things really you can leave it white too is you can actually turn off the light on the backdrop and make it gray.
Three is that you can actually put a sort of scrim effect and add a pattern to your backdrop and for has to be able to change the color to any backdrop color that you want. By the way of Gels, if you have any questions about any things I just said, just comment below and I will answer your questions however I can.
