Time to improvise

Last year I shot the cd cover for a great sax player named Bola at my old studio.  This year he has a new fangled sax that has a unique sound and look, so he wanted me to capture that.  It's basically an updated version of his cd cover portrait.  Last time I used a 9' roll of seamless white paper for my backdrop, but now that I don't use that old studio anymore, a 30 pound, 9' roll of paper seemed pretty much out of the question.   Fortunately, if you blitzkrieg enough photons at it,  literally everything in any color can look white to a camera.  Enter a complicated, high tech solution;  linen closets.  The closer to white it starts, the less battery power it'll take to nuke the backdrop to make it white.  I used a bone colored curtain I borrowed from my good friend Jen at Healing Connections.   A couple speedlights pointed at the curtain and instantly I done had me a professional studio.  Yee haw!  You can even make it just slightly off white, and a couple magic wand clicks later, you have literally perfect white.  You don't need crazy equipment in the least.  A bed sheet,  a couple speedlights and an umbrella in a dirty basement can get you pretty much the same result as a 10,000 square foot, state of the art techno wonder facility.

The camera doesn't care if you are in a war zone or the Garden of Eden, that shot will look the same.  It's a handy backup plan if you end up in a place that looks part dungeon, part municipal dump.  Now Bola's home is absolutely immaculate, but the shot still required a clean backdrop, devoid of beautiful furniture and artwork.  He was certainly right though, that is one of the coolest looking instruments I've seen.

---

Essential equipment for any ultra high tech, modern studio.

---