Blue Sky for Indoor Photo Shoots

Sensing that I'm on the right track with my indoor dio building and my attempts at creating rocks and vegetation, the next step in the test process was to get something to simulate a blue sky. For this I selected a 4.5' roll of my favorite brand seamless paper, Savage #31, Blue Jay.  

The photo was shot with a single camera mounted Nikon SB700 speedlight bounced into the ceiling, at 400 ISO, f.8.0  I had to do a bit of adjustment in Photoshop because I only used one flash instead of my usual two.  You can judge the results for yourselves, but I quite like the effect.  

Blue Backdrop test by Gary  Menten, on Flickr

The next step is to build up a lot more rocks and vegetation for the background.

Your team is reasonably well camouflaged in this green and tan environment!

The rooted foliage looks fantastic! The rock-work is quite convincing!

Fantastic choice for the backdrop Gary! It looks great! It works so well with the environment you have created . Can't wait to see K-troop on their adventures!

Dang, that's gonna work really nicely.

Yeah very simple and effective for your hot climates. Would be even better wit a slight, light colour transition.

Looking good - have you tried spraying some water (or Glycerine) on the foliage? Would probably give it a nice rain forest look, if you are going for that.

The plants and rock look nice and the lighting is very even with your bounced flashlight.

It's looking great! The foliage and the faux rocks look excellent together. Agree with Ovy that the blue background being slightly lighter towards the 'horizon' would make it even more convincing.

Ovy wrote:Yeah very simple and effective for your hot climates. Would be even better wit a slight, light colour transition.

That's easily achievable by using a second flash at the bottom of the seamless roll, pointed either downwards or parallel to the ground. I did not do it this time because I had only enough fresh batteries for one flash unit. I could have pulled out my studio light gear of course, but that seemed lie a lot of trouble for this one test shot.

skywalkersaga wrote:It's looking great! The foliage and the faux rocks look excellent together. Agree with Ovy that the blue background being slightly lighter towards the 'horizon' would make it even more convincing.

I agree. See my comment below.

Valiarde wrote:Looking good - have you tried spraying some water (or Glycerine) on the foliage? Would probably give it a nice rain forest look, if you are going for that.

The plants and rock look nice and the lighting is very even with your bounced flashlight.  

We use a water and glycerin mixture normally, sprayed from a small atomizer. I didn't think to do this, however there are a couple of reasons why i doubt I will. Chiefly, the difficulty of cleaning up after shooting.

That's ingenious and looks good too.

Theboo-bomb wrote:That's ingenious and looks good too.

Thank-you. I really like it also.

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:

Wow! This looks very good! Quite a convincing sky! Great job on the foliage and rock work as well!

This really does look excellent. The sky is great, and I love the rocks and foliage. I was going to make the same comment others have made on the gradation of color. My instinct would have been to add that with spraypaint or something, so when you said you could do it with light, I was immediately so curious to see that effect!

ReverendSpooky wrote:This really does look excellent.  The sky is great, and I love the rocks and foliage.  I was going to make the same comment others have made on the gradation of color.  My instinct would have been to add that with spraypaint or something, so when you said you could do it with light, I was immediately so curious to see that effect!

The effect of graduation of the sky's color or lightness is most easily achieved by using an flash or light unit down at the bottom of the seamless roll, well below the table top itself. It has the advantage of being adjustable so that you can get just right....