The Flash Book

Chapter Six

How to Light Backgrounds

Baby got back!

You know what happens if you do a portrait and you don’t light the background? Well, I’ve done it, and I can tell you—nothing. That’s right—nothing bad happens at all. But, let’s consider this: your subject has very dark hair—maybe even jet black hair—and they’re wearing a black shirt, or blouse or another name for a shirt, and you want to photograph them on a roll of black, seamless paper, but you don’t want to light the background. Then what? Well, you wind up with a creepy, floating head photo, where all you see is this one creepy-looking floating head in your frame, and this is precisely why I tell my students to never do this in a dark studio by yourself late at night, because it can totally ...