that's pretty creative xD

Hehe, thanks. *^^* We were just having fun and looking for props.

And...by the way...your profile image? Yeah, that makes me cringe big time. Especially on the 70-200. >.< Just...ow! Hopefully not yours?

Granted..its only the filter, but still.

no it's not mine =D the original photo is of an 70-200mm 2.8 on a 1D Mk3, as for the damage.. http://www.face-full.com/online/jan.....te.htm?page=62 that's what comes with the job for them sadly xD

oh and the front element would be badly scratched :I

Looks like the technique's working out for you!

Based on the size of the background, are you blasting a white wall with light to blow it out? Because if that's a light source... wow. HUGE.

Honestly, this is a bit of selective 'cheating'. With white BG's, its fairly easy to do, though.

The original photo was actually framed to the edge of the paws/hat. There was a little bit of light falloff towards the edges of the frame - I used PS to clean it back up to pure white, and then recomposed with a larger crop with the background set to pure white.

Zack Arias actually did a really good walk through of how to do these sorts of shoots, located here: http://bit.ly/aHglnP . The part about composition and how to recompose/recrop, which is what I used is on this page: http://bit.ly/bRbFGd .

Thanks again for the tips on the white backgrounds, by the way!

I'd actually just gotten the backdrop in the mail yesterday and was planning on trying to shoot with that technique when I saw your photos. Thought I might as well ask and get a few tips beforehand. *^^* Your shots definitely made me want to try and see what I could come up with, honestly. Personally, I'd never thought of using the softbox itself as the background. THAT I'm definitely going to have to try as well.



As far as the technical aspects of this shoot...

The backdrop is a 10'x12' Backdrop Alley light gray backdrop, with two Alien Bee 800s firing at full.
Key light is a AB1600 firing at 1/4 power, through a 30x60 softbox at camera left.

Other than that, it was just a lot of playing with settings and levels. The room is fairly small (but with high ceilings)...so, a lot of light spillage and reflection. Which...means a lot of fiddling around and colorful words. *^^*

Yeah, one of the big advantages of the softbox as background is the closeness you can work to it, you can basically stand right against one without adding any shadows. It's a very compact setup, great for small spaces. A white sheet with a light behind it works well too. And I love how pure white and pure black backgrounds lend themselves to recomposing a scene, that's not cheating at all! Although even a consistent background lends itself to recomposition these days, with Photoshop CS5's Content Aware Fill tools. So coooool! :)

I hear you about fiddling. Thank goodness I got some strobes with built-in wireless, 1/10th stop output control, and proportional modeling lights for Xmas!

Thanks for the info. Always wanted to experiment with these types of backdrops but thought it would take a huge setup.
Realy interesting read. And a lot of food for future photo's :)

Not a problem at all. *^^* I'd been wanting to do the same...just play around with lighting & fully white backgrounds. Its really a blast, and not quite as difficult to setup as I'd first thought.

Hehe, best of luck with it if you decide to try it out! Definitely post photos when you do take 'em!

Ok, that's really creative XD I like that.

Hehe, only 'cause the neighbor who's house we were shooting at...hasn't updated his decorations in...well, ever. *^^* Makes for good props.