Shadowless White Background

<p>I've been photographing and assisting on a lot of product shoots over the past three years, and there's one thing that I'm finding to be

completely elusive: The completely white shadowless background.

<p>I've tried tables, tents to varying degrees of success, but I still can't figure it out in camera and go right for my old friend Photoshop to

finish the job. There are certainly some objects that are easy to do, and depending on the angle of the shot, it is possible to raise the

subject off the background and get what I need in camera. But there are still some things that I can't ever get right: Shoes, shot on level,

as though along the ground, and handbags, shot on level.

<p>My question is this, looking at this <a href ="http://www.chromaphoto.com/bags.html" target="_blank"> lovely picture of a bag </a>,

can I

get the image on the right, without losing the nice shading and without the mechanical reflection (the client wanted that...) in camera.

<p>Check out www.prada.com and then shop for handbags online, they're only $1000.00 but they're shadowless on white, magic

handbags.

<p>I know I can just bump that background light up a touch to go white back there, no problem ( I don't because I close cut the image in

PS

anyway, so why be finicky) but if I underlight it, I lose the texture of that woven bit.

<p>Should I just shut up and deal with it? Send my pics to Brazil for retouching? Or am I just missing some basic principle that will make

my

life simple and meaningful for eternity?

<p>Thanks in advance for you time :)

<p>p.s. I have read <a href="http://www.photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/00FykC">this post</a> and it's a great

explanation, but there's still a

shadow and it's not ground level.

Oh, and one small caveat: The images need to be shot in 15 minutes each, so black carding the edges for definition or

doing anything else for each bag is out of budget (stylists are expensive).

You're probably going to have to do some retouching, but it doesn't have to take long.

Zack Arias wrote a series of blog entries about shooting on a seamless white background. It's very comprehensive, and covers the reflection thing, in-camera.

http://www.zarias.com/?p=71

Brendan,

I took a look at the handbags on the Prada website. They're completely stripped out from their background without any shadows. And they look awful ! Because they have no shadows they look weightless and without substance as they float on the white page.

And if you look at the blog by Zarias, he uses a glossy tile board underneath his subjects. That's effective for reflecting the white from the background but it leaves a different kind of shadow, a specular shadow which is really a reflection of an adjacent object, his subject. I take it you don't want that either?

The proper way to do this is to shoot on white as you have been doing. Strip out the images from the background, again as you have been doing, then go one step farther than Prada did and in PhotoShop create a proper drop shadow so the product is anchored to the page.

To do this type of shot without resorting to PS stripping, ie. 'as shot', I use a transluscent acrylic table-top setup available here: http://www.academicimaging.com/tech/diginput/lights/kaisertables.html

You can light the sample from below or behind and balance the top or front lighting to totally remove the background (white) or feather it either from the top or the bottom. --Rich

Thanks so much.... that white tileboard looks cool. But I think the thing that clicked for me was the distance between

subject and background he keeps. I think I just need to go bigger instead of trying to fit it on a table. I'll try this out next

week and post some results.

Thanks again!

BT

The plexi simply makes the all white easier and I like the look of the reflection. It can be achieved with seamless but you will have to get

the ratio correct and maybe add another head to clean up the dark spot in the foreground. A higher reflective surface with a matte finish

could be a good alternative. A shot in 15 minutes could be a bit ambitious but once you have the lighting set it may be attainable.

You can accomplish this very easily. One simple method is to use a white paper continuous sweep background.

Place two small bounce umbrella lights behind the subject pointed back at 45% to the background from either side.

Light the subject with bounce umbrellas and/or softboxes as you wish. But make sure you set the background

lights 2 stops hotter than the key/fill lights combined. You need a flash meter to do this. Reflections from

the background will help wash out shadows at the sides and in front of the subject.

Just make sure you don't put the subject/bag to far back close to the background lights.

Here's an example with a model instead of a bag but you can get the idea.

http://www.pbase.com/bob_osullivan/image/103269012<div></div>