How do you make a cream background appear black/white?

scottduffy

scottduffy

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If you have a cream wall is there anything you can do with 2 studio lights to make it appear white or black? I would imagine this would have something to do with the distance of the lights from the wall but any help would be great? Would i be better using a background in photoshop? Don't know how to do this either by the way.
 
Hi Chaz,

One light on the subject, one on the background and the one that is on the background should be more powerful than the one on the subject? Would that work in the opposite way for the black?
 
i have been thinking about backgrounds but i can't get them just now. Maybe in a few days though.
 
It's all about distance from the subject to background

A well lit background can appear white behind your subject if the key light is -1 stops

Turn off the background light and although the subject exposure remains the same the background can appear grey/dark grey

Move the subject further away and the background can appear black even if the key light remains the same

DD
 
It's all about the light.

If there's enough light on the background then any colour will photograph as white.
if there's no light on the background then any colour will photograph as black - but that can be difficult to achieve, it needs an enormous distance between the subject and the background, unless there is no light on the background, as in this shot, where 2 softboxes were used but facing more or less forward. And even so, the background isn't entirely black.
blackisbeautiful_red.jpg


Take a look at these shots by Marc Gouguenheim. I happen to know that nearly all of them were taken against the cream wall in his house, he then used PS to add textures/lighten/darken/vignette/adjust colour. Backgrounds don't need to be either white or black to work...
 
i find using a gridded softbox and feathering the light can turn a white wall black
 
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