For awhile now, I’ve been getting bored with using the old fleece sheet setup for backdrops and wanting to try a real photography backdrop instead. The solid colors have long bothered me, and while adding texture using layers is fun, it’s also time consuming, so I’d like to try out a pre-textured background and save myself some time when processing. This morning I decided to check some out and ended up buying one for a fairly reasonable $60. If it works, I’d be willing to spend more, but any time I try something new I always go as cheap as possible to see how it works out, then spend up accordingly.

I like the seamless look of paper backdrops, but unless your studio has a hard floor you can’t use them properly (the look of the line created where the sheet on the floor meets the sheet hung on the wall has started to irritate me, but I’m not sure the muslin option is going to actually take care of that).There were also some so-called wrinkle-less options, but they were more than I’m willing to spend at this point. I’ve purchased many items from the low-end photography supply company Cowboy Studio off Amazon.com and have never been disappointed (the cheap umbrella light kits I bought from them two years ago are still in use), so I went with one of theirs – they had cheaper ones than the one I bought, but I need as much length as possible since I take full-length shots so I went with the biggest size. I decided on a neutral color for starters:

For awhile now I’ve had a vision of taking leaping shots with the subject (me, of course) completely draped in a sheer, flowing fabric from head to toe, and it finally came to me this morning where to get such fabric – curtain sheers! So after I threw the backdrop into the cart, I picked up some cheap curtain panels in lavender to use (I had a friend at work help me pick a color that we thought would work with the beige mottled background):

I think these will work, but it’s always an experiment. They were only eight bucks, so if they don’t work out, no big deal.

I know I said in an earlier post that I wasn’t going to shoot any new pics until I worked my way through all my older shots, but I’m already bored with everything and ready to try something new.