In scrapbooking trends come and go and then come back again. One that has come back is the colour black. Black is now being often used as a background colour for scrapbooking pages. One good thing about having a black background is that it goes with everything. There is not one colour that doesn't look good with black. The use of black is one of the simplest techniques going around to create fantastic scrapbook pages where photos and colours jump of the pages at you. Lets look at a few ideas.
Black is great as a background colour if you plan on using bold colours on your layout. Black means you can use these bold colours that just wouldn't work on any other colour. One way to create a bold background for a page is too sew colourful ribbon or material onto black cardstock. The colours will be jumping off the black card at the viewer.
Another idea is to have black card stock and sprinkle some different coloured embossing powder over it and then heat it. Immediately stamp words and images while it is still setting and allow it to dry. Alternatively you don't necessarily have to stamp anything into it, you could just leave it with random splashes of embossing over the page.
Another way to add colour to a page that is using a black background is to use colourful buttons on your page. You could use the buttons to create a border around a photo or to create a part of a border around a page.
The topic of this weeks post is shooting portraits indoors with a white background, I mean a grey background, I mean a black background... confusing? OK let me explain.
This weeks post is a bit of a tutorial on studio flash photography. WAIT! Don't run off simply because you don't have a fancy studio to shoot in! Most of us don't. The truth is, you don't need a fancy studio to make some pretty fancy images. If you have even a single flash, you can do some pretty neat stuff with it as long as you can get it off the camera (more on that in another post). For now we'll concentrate on the background.
If I told you that you could use a standard white background an make it appear solid black in your image what would you say?
If you have access to a white background (and by background I mean any piece of white material that you can hang up behind your subject) you actually have access to several different backgrounds ranging in shades from white to black.
Ok here's the "HOW TO" part (see the resource box below for examples images taken with these same settings)
Let's take a look at two examples. Take your first image (with the white background) at ISO 200, with a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second. Set the aperture to f8. Lighting could be as simple as a standard two light setup for the shot. One could be a soft box positioned high and at about a 45 degree angle to the subject. A second light shot directly onto the white backdrop will blow it out. Right, so far pretty basic stuff.
