White Seamless - Arias Style

A number of weeks ago, I shot a series of portraits in the high-key style – a well-lit subject in front of an over-exposed background. In fact, they were these portraits – taken of actors in the Normal Community High School production of Students on Stage. They were essentially shot on a white seamless background – although there’s no “seamless” nature to the shots (a white seamless makes a great background too – even if there’s no feeling of infinity).

While out at Kevin May’s studio last weekend, we got to shot everything on various different seamless surfaces. The simplest was just seamless paper or a long sheet of flexible plexiglass. We did some bigger objects in front of Kevin’s big seamless cyclorama. But the bottom line is all of these shots had no horizon line to cut through the object. They were wonderfully placed in a background that really made them pop. And that’s the goal to seamless – especially white seamless – it takes the subject and makes it really stand out. And while we shot a lot of products last weekend, putting people in front of a white seamless is also done very frequently. 

Before his short film “Transform” hit the Internets last Wednesday – at Scott Kelby’s blog – Zach Arias was sharing the love and paying it forward via his blog. We’ve mentioned Zach before on the CIPB – and as I was working back though his older blog entries I came across this absolute gold mine on white seamless shooting – in six fantastic parts. This is really everything you could ever want to know about working on white seamless – from how to set it up, through shooting on it, and post-processing it. Primo stuff:

• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space
• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2 :: Setting Lights & Exposure
• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2b :: Full Length With OneLight
• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 3 :: From White To Black
• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 4 :: Simple Changes In Post Production
• White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 5 :: Wrap up & Questions

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