Flash photography: Easily create a white background
Wednesday 10 January 2024, 17:17 by Elja Trum | 4,285 views | 2 commentsThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
For a portrait photo from the chest up, you don't need a huge white background. There's a handy trick for creating an even white background in no time.
You can put a softbox with a flash behind your model. That flash fires at the same time as you take the photo, and the white softbox creates an even white background.
Of course, you still need to measure the correct flash power. You want to avoid the flash on the background overexposing your model. Especially because your softbox will be fairly close behind your model, there's a good chance that the flash will be set too powerfully.
In the photo above, I deliberately left the edge of the softbox in the frame, but the idea is to create a completely white background by keeping the edges out of the frame.
It can help to use a telephoto lens and zoom in further. You then get less of the edge in the frame. A very large softbox obviously helps with this too.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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2 comments
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toondevos
wrote on Wednesday 17 January 2024 at 09:26
| reply
In this case, the softbox could be positioned quite a bit lower (that’s how I always do it). You only need a narrow strip of white at the top. This gives you more space at the bottom and allows you to place the model in the white up to about the waistband. What matters is that the entire outline of the model is white. Then it is very easy to make the rest of the background white in Photoshop.
Translated from Dutch. -
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Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
