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[saintscottofthenortham]

Ladies, Gentlemen, Chav's & Chavette's. The missus took our two girls to this Photo party thing round her mates house. Had some proffesional photographer come round and spent the afternoon snapping away. My girls are 2 1/2 and 3 months, the youngest obviously not the ideal subject but I thought a pro would have ways around keeping there attention and making the most out of what they have in front of them, but it wasn't to be. They did manage to get some alright ones of my eldest, but nothing special. Mainly due to her wearing a white cotton roll neck top which was then placed upon a white bloody background.

 

I have a DSLR camera, getting on a bit now but it is still a great piece of kit. I have had some superb pic's of the girls but want something that I can blow up onto canvas. Anyone have an idea of what we could use as a plain background other than bedsheets? Because the bedsheets are wrinkling and my OCD is kicking in and my limited Photoshop skills are not helping either.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as we had these in mind for Crimbo pressie's and at the moment, it just ain't happening.

 

SSotN

[Deppo]

This thread isn't as good as I was expecting it to be.

[Pancake]

How well can you use your SLR? Do you know how to use (and the benefits of) DoF? To get a clean background, hang a bedsheet (or whatever) a distance behind the girls and then use shallow DoF to get the girls in focus, but the background of of whack. Feel free to drop me a PM if you want anymore info/help.

[saintscottofthenortham]

Sounds like a plan fella. Cheers for your help!

[Minty]

Personally, I never try and fix the background. Yes it helps if it is generally plain, but as Pancake says, Depth of Field is king and get that right, it really shouldn't matter too much. As a result, 98% of the portraiture I do is out and about, or in a natural and comfortable setting for the subject. With kids, that usually means in their garden or down the park and I shoot using a 70-200mm at f4, sometimes less.

 

Obviously better glass costs more money, you can get decent results with cheaper lenses... I'm a Canon man, so I used to have the previous version of the 75-300... it's minimum aperture was f5.6 at 300mm, but it still did a good job. Focal length removes you from the situation so the kids can play and do whatever they want to do without being so aware of you being there.

 

Having written all that, I realise you were talking about specifically doing this at home, but if you can, try the above and see what you get.