Today I want to talk a bit about photography backgrounds and light.
For the past 2 1/2 weeks, we’ve been spending time in our Arizona home-away-from-home and I’ve been struggling with the colours in our condo. I love them in real life—yellows, golds, and rusts. But I don’t like those tones in my still life images.
I’d set up a still life, take a shot and when I edited it in Lighroom I would desaturate the yellows. I would then end up with a photo that was flat and dull. It became obvious I needed to do something to make my life easier (I’m going to explain and demonstrate how I made these background(s) in a later post).
I was inspired by the lovely Cristina Colli when she shared a tutorial on how she made her own photography backgrounds. I can spy a Cristina shot a mile away … each one is beyond amazing, and she is brilliant. You may already follow her on Instagram @c_colli.
So here is my version of a faux painted backdrop … I’m quite thrilled with it! If it hadn’t been for our yellow and gold walls here in Arizona, I may never have gotten around to trying this. However, I can see that I’m absolutely going to need one of these at home as well.
I’m having so much fun with my tulips from Trader Joes! They’re starting to fall apart, so I separated the pink ones into a white vase:
The bouquet started out with what I called “Spring in a Vase” (from Anthropologie, a gift from the hubs).
Here it is on my first, plain white background. I love it as well, and I know I’ll be using it a lot too. However, in this image, I was a little disappointed in the light. It seems great at first, but it’s so bright that the image appears a bit flat. That’s because it was mostly coming straight on …
In the following image, the light is coming from the side, and is much more dramatic. I used a Lightroom preset by Kim Klassen, who is also brilliant :) to create moodier, darker tones:
Lightroom Preset by Kim Klassen kk_Tangled
I have a post in the works on how I created this painted backdrop. Hope to see you again!
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Thank you for your kind words Barb ☺️ Your backdrop looks gorgeous, well done!
Beautiful shots and I love the BG of the last one.
Such beautiful photos, Barb, and such gorgeous backgrounds!
Love this Barb!!
A lovely background! I look forward of your post on how you made the background! I found some wall paper I thought of using as backdrop in the weekend …let’s see how that goes!