I’m regularly asked – by frustrated shooters – what materials they should be using to acquire a crisp, clean, pure white photography background.

Regrettably, that would be the wrong question to ask! It in fact, isn’t the background material that provides you with the clean white you are in search of.

It’s the amount of light!

Here’s the situation…you set up a dirt free white bed sheet or a roll of white paper – and you put your subject in front of it.

You set up a light source or two and light your subject. All is looking excellent. You think you have a satisfactorily lit subject and a nice white background.

Now, you shoot the photo.

Worriedly, you hurry to the photo lab if you are shooting film or to your computer if you are shooting digital. You check the finished picture and ta daaa!

Your subject is flawlessly lit, however the background is really a dull gray color. Not the clean, pure white you saw in the viewfinder!

Seem familiar? If you’ve been having a tough time with your high key photography…And you’ve been getting that dull gray color (regardless of the materials you use) here’s the way to repair the problem!

All light has a certain drop off feature.

By that I mean the further the light is from a subject matter, the dimmer it is. As a result, that means… when you’ve got a specific amount of light striking your subject, and you are using that SAME illumination to light your background, your light is further from your background than from your subject. Consequently, it is going to be slightly dimmer by the time it gets to the background fabric.

Wow! That’s a mouthful. Simply stated…

The reason you are making that gray color is because there’s more light striking your subject than is striking the photography background.

To have your backdrop be a real, picture perfect white…merely hit it with MORE illumination than you will be using for the subject!

Seems obvious when you finally realize it, but this can be a major sticking point for a lot of shooters.

The amount of “over-exposure” that is required for the background depends upon the color of the backdrop fabric. If it is already white, you could probably get by with using enough extra illumination to have an over-exposure of roughly half an f-stop. Maybe even one full f-stop.

If the material you are starting with is gray…that’s OK as well! Merely hit it with around 2 ½ stops (give or take) more illumination than you are using for the subject.

Here’s one which will blow some minds…imagine if your photography background fabric is really a pure black piece of canvas – or black roll of paper?

It doesn’t matter! Zap it with 5, 6 or maybe even 7 additional stops worth of illumination (more than you’re using for the primary subject) and you will once again have a nice sparkling white backdrop.

This can be a BUNCH of illumination and I wouldn’t advocate starting out using a black background. When you start off closer to white initially, it is a lot less difficult. Nevertheless, take a crack at it! It’s a fun experiment and will educate you a lot with reference to light!

The point being – by way of an adequate amount of illumination, you can get a nice white photography background regardless of the type or color fabric you start with.

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For some more photography background information, check out this video:

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For most of us, shooting reasonable exposures is simply a matter of using our camera’s settings on autopilot and shooting away. However the one thing our camera CAN’T perform for us is to make a gorgeous, professional looking background.

That’s an enormous creative issue that separates the pros from the amateurs.

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With this short, on line video course, you’ll first discover what materials are necessary and where to acquire them… You then can make your initial photography background – a blue, “Old Masters” style as well as learning multiple ways of using it for getting different effects.

Next up, you’ll create a red background – then a black one and eventually gray. They are in the favored “Old Masters” style that shooters have gravitated to for decades.

When completed (they each only take a couple of minutes to produce) – you’ll be able to roll them up, toss them in your automobile, and never be without a picture background again!

The second part shows you an easy way to create a background that is expandable and can be used on any size “set”.

The following part addresses chroma key backgrounds…their history, why you at times see a blue screen and other times a green one…and how to acquire and use your own. Again, you’ll possess your own for pennies on the dollar.

In conclusion, the course reveals methods to completely master your camera, lenses and lighting equipment so that – using the fundamental backdrops you have already learned to produce – you’ll be able to turn them into any color (and any shade of that color) background – at will, with no conjecture. It is a very advanced technique that few shooters understand. Even most professionals fall short in this area.

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