Studio Portraits Using Black or White Seamless Backgrounds

Dr. Hibret Benjamin is a dentist with a great smile. She was shot here with a single light using a white seamless background. 

When I do my studio headshots for Headshot Days, I try to give people two different looks. One way I do that is by shooting on both a black and a white background.  I also change the light style to give two different looks.

We go to various locations for our open Headshot Days. Corporate Headshot Days locate at company locations where we shoot several employees in a day. I use seamless because it is most portable.  Nine-foot wide rolls allow me to get farther from the background. I use Savage 66-12 for Pure White and 20-12 Black.   I have two separate Background Support Stands for each backdrop so I can roll one up to reveal the other. My favorite is the Westcott that is 10.5 wide or seven feet wide depending on how many crossbars are used.

For the white background, I only use one light. I use the largest source I can for a key light. My preferred is an 86” Extreme Silver PLM Umbrella with diffuser from Paul C Buff.  This is place on a Paul C Buff Einstein E640 flash unit fired with Cybersync wireless triggers. I like the way this light wraps around the subject softly filling in the shadows. It also leaves a beautiful round catch light. For the white shots I usually have the light straight behind me and directly on the subject.

IT expert Joe Markert of FunctionOneIT, was shot on a black seamless background using 3 lights. 

If I need it, will put a diffused light on the white background. But I always want to make sure the background is not blown out and is in the top quadrant of white on the histogram.  If you blow it out, pixilation happens around the hair. This looks extremely unnatural and detracts from the photos. When I process the photos in retouching, I replace the white background with pure white. So any white showing through the hair needs to be as white as possible in the original shot without pixilation.

For the black background, I change the light to make it a little edgier.  I move the key light off axis to one side by a few feet. I add a gridded rim light from behind the subject on the opposite side of the key light. Also, I put a light on the background. I grid this and throw a diffuser on it to make it just bright enough to create a gradient around the subject. This is especially important if they are wearing darker colors or have dark hair. It separates them from the background. When I retouch, I try to even out the black so it goes pretty dark on the edges. Another tip is to get the subject away from the background so that it is somewhat out of focus. Paper backgrounds have natural insistencies that can be attractive if they are out of focus.

People like having two totally different looks after the session. They will post them in different locations depending on whether white or black is more appropriate.

Dorothee Fisher cofounder of NousDecor was shot on a white seamless at Headshot Day in san Francisco. 

Shooting with a White Seamless Background and Natural Light

For Children's Health Council, March 2013.

Through trial and error at Burning Man I have found a great way to get natural looking photos on a white background with very little post.  This blog will outline the steps for those seeking to create this look.

Richard Avedon popularized this style of white background shooting with his photos of the American West in the late 1970s. In these photos Avedon typically found a shadowed area next to a barn or other building. In this way there was bright light all around to fill the photos, but the subject, being in shade had soft shadows and even light.

Nomad - Shot at Burning Man 2012. 

Similarly, I use a silver-topped canopy tent to create a shaded area. In back of the tent I drop a white seamless background. On a sunny day, the sunlight hits the top of the tent creating a nice soft light. Light seeps in from every side of the tent creating a catch light in the eyes of the subject and even light all around.  Of course, I do this in color rather than in black and white that does create color temperature differences between photos taken at different times of the day. Also, within photos I have found that the feet might be a cooler color temperature while the face is warmer. I attribute this to the surrounding outside the tent. If there agree shaded areas instead of refracted sun, they can throw a more blue light.

 

Setup with canopy tent and white seamless.

The white seamless needs to be exposed as close to white as possible without blowing it out.  Blowing out the background can create a halo around the subject, particularly in the hair where it looks unnatural or parts of hair partially disappear.

I like to replace the background with pure white later in post. This is easier if the white was originally close to 256 and more separated from the subject colors. A subject wearing white or white stripes can sometimes blend with the background, requiring a more specific selection rather than a global.

 

For Children's Health Council, March 2013. 

One technique that gets it right most of the time is to go to the channels layer of photoshop and duplicate the blue channel.  Then using levels, you can drag the sliders until the subject goes to black and the back ground goes to white. Usually the white slider only has to come down to 240 or so. You bring up the black slider as close as you can without seeing any grey sneak into the background. If you have to you can paint in black on the subject. When everything looks solid, you can save the selection and create a mask on a new layer I photoshop. Then fill the layer with white. I find it help to soften the edge of the mask using the refine edge tool. Usually a feather of 2 works well. If you want to get back some stray hairs, you can also use the masking tools to paint in a blend around the head.

 

Freckles - Burning Man 2010.

Have fun with this. Everyone loves their photo on a white background. It also looks great on most websites because of their white backgrounds. I recently shot a series of photos using this technique for Children’s Health Council. You can see more of those photos on my other blog scottrklinephoto.com/blog.