First Run with Seamless

2/17/10 – Rebecca Getsfrid – Environmental Portrait Photographer in Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR

Things I’ve learned about seamless paper in the past week:
1. It’s awesome once it’s set up.
2. It’s a pain in the ass to set up without help.

I learned #2 after losing about 3 yards of it to wrinkles when trying to unroll it from the background stand on my own. Oh yeah…

3. It’s heavy.

My background stand’s locking mechanism couldn’t handle it, which led to me holding everything in place with vice grips. It got the job done, but I’m not sure the stand will ever be the same again.

I’ve been wanting to play with seamless for a while, so I grabbed a 9ft roll of Thunder Gray for use on a Boudoir style shoot I had coming up.

The subject gave me her permission to make use of this image in public places, which, while technically as the photographer you don’t need, in this sort of situation, I like to bend to my client’s wishes. This is an easy 2 light setup. One AB800 with just the reflector is providing the gradient on the seamless, and one AB800 with softbox is lighting the subject from the side. If you wanted, you could add a third light either on the shadow side of the hair, or to provide a nice rim, but I liked the look of just the two light sources.



I also made use of the seamless for this set of four portraits. The thunder gray gels very nicely, providing good, saturated colors. Three lights this time, gelled AB800 on the paper, right behind subject. Softbox camera right, grid spot back camera left providing just a hint of rim.

It’s a super easy setup to do, and just get the subject to do fun crazy things while you shoot away. Switch colors, do it again. It’s fun and has a definite mass market appeal, so I definitely plan to advertise this sort of thing as a special, along with a 16×16 aluminum print or something. You don’t even need seamless paper to do it. Could just as easily be done against a blank wall in a client’s house.