The Most Amazing Background | Red Deer Photography

Since I started my journey into more of a film based look I have had the opportunity to shoot against some beautiful natural backgrounds like the Rocky Mountains, the beautiful open plains of Alberta and Montana and also some ‘studio’ work – in my very make shift space.  I have had AMAZING results with the whole VSCO line and I find that my pictures look amazing with all of the treatments I have tried with them.

I continue to get asked the same question over and over though – enough that I thought I may as well do a blog post about it.

This big secret – which has impressed some people and seriously disappointed others is that it is seamless paper – specifically Thunder Grey from Savage.

I know – your can start to breath again and then scratch your head as you wonder exactly what the heck all the commotion is about.  Thunder Grey is an amazing colour but can be touchy to work with.  Here is the pros and cons of seamless…and the dark grey colors you can get.

1) Wrinkles – seamless wrinkles like a son of a gun and that is something that you have to be ready for.  Seamless can be temperamental and generally tricky because once it is wrinkled there is not much you can do about it…except embrace cloning, the patch tool and occasionally content aware.  Using your photoshop skills will elevate the use of seamless and they are something you should really try hard to master.

2) Banding – the darker the colour, the more intense the banding.  Not to say however that you cannot get banding with light colors – it has happened to me and sadly resulted in a beautiful metal print being tossed in the garbage.  There are some awesome tutorials out there to deal with banding, but using Thunder Grey needs to come with a warning that if you use it you may curse it (and hopefully not me).

3) Cost – Seamless paper is fairly inexpensive – especially if you live in the USA.  I live in Canada and sadly the price is about 40% more for a roll of paper then it is there, but depending on how you want to use it the cost may be much less over all when your considering time and the amount of time a cloth drop would cost you.  I started using seamless during cake smashes as an easy way to clean up and not have to worry about too much background to worry about.  It comes in a lot of awesome colors and it is easy to dispose of when you are done with it.  That being said you will cut, tear and rip off that background when it is dirty or damaged so you will need to replace it as you run low.

4) Storage – Storage can be difficult depending on your work space.  Seamless comes in 2ft, 5ft and 9ft rolls and if you can store it on a wall or have a space that can fit it – your set.  If not you will be stuck stuffing it wherever it will fit…which is annoying and if your partner is like mine, the constant photography stuff everywhere will eventually get on their nerves.

Overall, seamless paper is a great product that I have been using for years in my photography career and frankly it is cheap enough to consider using if you never have before.  You can always sell it if you hate it…

Suzie
XO