
Good, Simple Stock Photography
What we're going to cover today is how to create a simple high-key photograph. High key, means a photography of a subject on a predominantly white background. Why do we want the subject on a predominantly white background? Well aside from the fact that most content areas where you might want to use a stock photograph have a white background, they also make your subject very easy to cut out completely using something like the magic wand tool in Photoshop. Being able to cut your subject out means that you can transpose it onto a transparent background, which can then be used absolutely anywhere within a design. Handy!
What You'll Need
The first thing you'll need is obviously a camera. Now, a Digital SLR will work best for this but you should still be able to use a high-end digital compact camera (such as the Panasonic Lumix) and achieve very good results. Alternatively, if you know someone who does own a Digital SLR, then now would be a good time to beg, borrow, or steal it from them. The next main thing we're going to need is light, lots of it. The ideal component here is an external flash for a Digital SLR but bright lamps, especially desk lamps with adjustable heads, will work very well too. If you do use lamps then you want the brightest bulb you can find, not one of those dim yellow ones. It pretty much goes without saying that you're going to need some space for this, so your cramped office may not be the best location. Getting outdoors into the sunlight would be ideal if you have a garden or maybe some sort of bachelor pad with a roof terrace. Next you'll need a (clean!) plain white bedsheet, table cloth, curtain, or anything else similar. This is going to serve as the backdrop for the shots. The cleaner and whiter it is the better, as this will be the easiest to work with later on. You'll also need some sort of support to drape your backdrop over. Modified cardboard boxes can work very well for this, as we'll look at in a moment, however pretty much anything that can support your backdrop both horizontally and vertically in an L shape should do the trick. Of course you'll also need a subject, the thing which you want to photograph. Doing things the cheap and cheerful way like this means that you can't select anything too big. Your subject needs to be able to sit on top of your backdrop and be totally surrounded by it. Finally, you'll need a copy of Adobe Photoshop. CS3 or higher should be fine, we're not going to be doing anything too fancy.Step 1
So the first thing we're going to do is set up our backdrop. Essentially you want the sheet to be partially on the floor, then curve up and hang from something vertically. This means when we place the subject on top of the sheet it will be white underneath and white behind. Make sure you set this up somewhere with a lot of light, remember the roof garden which we discussed. I used a towel for this tutorial, which works fine but does leave a littl ebit of texture just underneath the subject. If you want to be a bit more fancy about it, you can grab a cardboard box, a piece of white card, cut some bits out of your sheet, and create a light tent like this:
Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8


Step 9


Step 10

Final Images


John O’Nolan
Founder at Ghost.org. Writes about Open source, startup life, non-profits & publishing platforms. Travels the world with a bag of kites.
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