Although I’ve only been in my new studio for about six months now, I already embarked on a little renovation project to improve the space that I have.

Those who’ve looked through my portfolio of studio work have probably noticed that I am a big fan of “classic” backgrounds – that is, simple whites, blacks, and grays.  I’m not a huge fan of anything with bold textures, patterns, or really anything that might resemble what you might find at your local superstore portrait studio.

Gray, in particular, has really captured my attention.  I’m a student of photography, always, and as I find myself browsing through magazines (I’m probably one of the few people that buy magazines simply to deconstruct all of the photos – and especially advertisements – to try to figure out how they were lit, what studio lighting techniques may have been used to achieve a particular effect), I find myself continually drawn to photographs that were photographed against a plain gray background.  To me, they ring with an elegance that other colours can’t achieve.  Classic, yet modern.

To date, I’ve used a simple (albeit large) roll of seamless paper as my gray background.  This has served me well, but at the same time, I’m finicky.  Paper, when bent, leaves little dimples in the paper that are pretty much impossible to get rid of.  It just makes for a less-than-perfect picture, in my opinion.

So back to the renos.   I decided about a month ago that I needed a solid gray wall that was pretty much perfectly smooth and without distractions.  This meant calling my buddy, Geoff, to come in and spend a week closing off a section of my studio, mudding, and painting until he came up with something that looks, to me, exactly what I was hoping for:  a beautiful, smooth surface for me to shoot against.  It’s dark gray, but the beauty of gray is that when I put a strong light against it, it can appear white.  On the flip side, if I move my lights back from the wall, it can appear black.  In essence, it’s the “all-in-one” wall I was hoping for.

Tags: background, gray, renos, Studio, Yellowknife

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 9:26 am and is filed under Studio Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.