Bad reflections…..

Sometimes you don’t really have a choice and you have to work with what you got.
Especially during tradeshows it can sometimes be a little bit tricky to create good shots, not because the sets are often really small (especially on booths) but also because sometimes the backgrounds are not really what you ordered.

Take this shot.
I asked for a black or very dark background, I knew the space would be really small and I would be close by so doing several demos a day with a light background can be pretty boring, but with a dark background at least I can play a bit more with contrast. Arriving on the booth we already saw that although the background was black it was a pretty reflective background, this means that a lot of angles will give you reflections, not really a perfect situation. Now you can do two things (well you can do several but let’s keep it simple), you can complain and demand something else (and trust me that will be your last show, unless you’re David Lachapelle or similar of name) or you can just adjust and make the best of it.

For me it meant, making the best out of it and actually using the background for that reflection, and in all honesty after the second demo I loved the fact that it was reflective. Now to understand this you have to know a little bit about me, I love my work but I don’t want to repeat the same thing over and over again, some people love doing this, they work out a look and stick with it for years, it can be highly successful but it’s not my thing, I love that people will come up to a demo and never know what to expect, it will always be slightly or totally different.

In this case we used a gridded striplight and placed it really close to the backdrop just feathering over Nadine our model. The effect was in my opinion pretty awesome, especially realizing it’s only one light and we didn’t use anything on the background, add to this that I’m literally max 1 mtr away from Nadine and you realize you can do this in almost any studio/location, you just need something that semi reflects 😀

So the next time you shop for a background, take something that reflects, good luck.