Post #517945 by DejaVoodoo on Wed, Mar 17, 2010 9:02 AM

On 2010-03-17 01:10, hewey wrote:

On 2010-03-14 14:59, DejaVoodoo wrote:
it will be somewhat obscured by various set dressings in the foreground such as plants and moody lighting.

If you're going with moody lighting, Im guessing that means pretty dark with minimal/strategic use of light to acheive that? How about using some black velvet as the backdrop? Black velvet is the blackest black (thats why velvet painters use it!), and also means the viewers attention is solely fixed on your subject.

That's actually a fantastic idea! I'd planned to keep the background as black as possible without actually going all the way black. I'd like the lighting (and resulting shadows created) to be the "black" in the photo and still have some other kind of natural element besides the wooden tiki. Thatch, reed, and bamboo trimmed walls seem the norm and would read as "hut/bar interior" verses some generic blackness, however those materials are expensive and I'd only need something like a maximum 4 foot by 5 foot span to fill the right side of the composed shot as well as the "holes" between the plant leaves. Does that make sense?

But, because of your post, I'm thinking this whole photo could take on a velvet painting vibe and be totally cool, if not what I'd originally had in mind. Hmmm...