June 10, 2011, Whitebox Studios. Some of the more frequent questions that our clients ask from us are, “Do you guys have a black background?”, or “Do you have backdrops at the studio?”
The answer is, Yes and No. Yes, because we can make the white background seem like black, gray or just white. No, because technically, our studio’s main feature is that we have a Cove Wall, which acts like White Seamless Paper, only better. Unlike paper, which can wrinkle and tear, or fabric that gets dirty, the cove wall is a sturdy, “un-wrinkable” and “un-tearable” background. Every shoot, the studio gets cleaned up and washed to keep the studio floor clean. And every other month or so, the studio gets painted all white again, depending on the use. Unlike paper, you can cut it out if it gets dirty. That’s why we do advise our clients to try not to drag anything on the floor, and treat the white floor as nicely as they could!
Here’s an image of how our seamless wall looks like:
As you can see, the main shooting space is 33ft long and 30ft wide. The natural light windows are on west as they are west facing. The Cove Wall is a curved wall, and the purpose is to make your background seem seamless.
It’s on the flip side, but this is the floor plan of the studio so you get a better idea of where things are.
South of the Cove Wall would be the garage door, and the south west side if you’re facing the cove wall, is another entrance, which a lot of events use.
Shooting on a Wall vs. Shooting on a Cove Wall
If you’re not using any background lights, and it’s not a cove wall, shooting close to the studio wall will create a “bent shadow”, which some photographers are not quite fond of. Editing the line out can be a pain as well. Having a more natural shadow would mean that you need to shoot from farther away, which makes the light fall on the subject very differently.
You can see from this photo, this is what you will get shooting on a wall that has a separation from the floor. Most of the time, too, the wall will have base boards which are don’t look as nice, and are a pain to edit.
This photo was taken on the Cove Wall with a one light setup. The model isn’t that far away from the wall, but you can see the difference in the shadow and how it looks a lot more natural as well.
Shooting on a Cove Wall – Eliminating Shadows, Making White Background White
To remove shadows all together, this is where seamless can be prime. Eliminating shadow is easy with the addition of background lights. Since the wall isn’t transluscent, the background lights need to be directed on the cove, or behind the subject.
Take a quick look at this light setup, where it’s one way to light the subject enough to remove the shadows.
This type of lighting is quite useful for catalogue shoots where you want to eliminate the shadows as much as you can (and leave some just to make it look realistic) to make it easily croppable. Stock photos can fall in the same category as well. You can always check and see what equipment we have at Whitebox Studios that you can use to create the look you want for the shoot.
Shooting on a Cove Wall – Making White Background appear Gray or Black
This tutorial is actually inspired from Zack Arias’ Blog Post about White Seamless Paper, and we’re taking it into context here at Whitebox Studios. If you’re a photographer reading this post, you should go and take a look at that post as well and see how you can modify your background using lights.
If you look back and check my first post about the difference between shooting on a cove and a wall, you’ll see that shooting without background lights can make the feel of your shoot different!
One of our clients Lisa Chen wanted to have two different feels to her shoot, so we took one in white (background lights are on) and one in gray (only the key light was on):
Another key thing to understand is how light works. Zack brilliantly explained it in a lighting diagram to illustrate the Inverse Square Law. The larger the ratio between your subject’s exposure and the background’s exposure, the darker your background will appear. Essentially, when the farther you are from the background, the darker your background will appear.
Additionally, using grids or other ways to control and shape light greatly affect how the images turn out. Grids focus the light so that you can highlight certain parts of your subject.
In this image, we just quickly used a grid for the second image to try out some of our lighting equipment here at the studio, so pardon the silly expressions.
Zack Arias’ article on grid lighting is perfect to showcase how you can maximize a white background and create different kinds of lighting. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on grids either. Check out this photographer and how he used grids to restrict the light, and to create an almost black background.
So, hopefully this quick tutorial can help answer some of your questions if you do want to shoot at the studio. There’s tons of ways to modify and shape light to create that vision you have in mind. Still, if you prefer using an actual black background or gray background, we have some vendors to refer you to, or we can rent and transport it for you for a small fee.
Sometimes, it also just means you have to try and pratice, practice practice. Our creative rates for portfolios are only $40/hour, so come and contact us today!
Do you any questions about studio lighting, or our studio? We’d love to help.
Just quite simply contact us here. We’re looking to blog some more about tutorials to help our clients, so let us know.
All the photos on this post were taken at Whitebox Studios using our own lighting and modifiers.
