Photophone for New Year’s shooting — ideas for home, corporate and outdoor photo sessions | Articles | Photo, video, optics

In Novem­ber-Decem­ber, pho­to stu­dios have a hot pre-New Year sea­son — book­ings for halls even for sev­er­al weeks in advance are closed in a mat­ter of days. It is dif­fi­cult to find stu­dios where a Christ­mas tree has not been put up in almost every room by these months. It sounds per­fect: here’s New Year’s Eve for you, and here’s a Christ­mas tree with a gar­land. Book, take pho­tos, enjoy life. But there are many prob­lems: all the scenery is so sim­i­lar to each oth­er that you can choose the hall even blind­ly; few emp­ty seats; You can­not bring a stu­dio to a cor­po­rate par­ty, a hol­i­day for chil­dren, to your home or to the street.

We tell you what pho­to back­grounds for New Year’s shoot­ing exist and give ideas on how to styl­ize and make an atmos­pher­ic win­ter pho­to shoot with­out leav­ing the room.

pixabay.com

Solid photo backgrounds for a New Year’s photo shoot and ideas for them

Chroma Key

Chro­makey is a green back­ground and a tech­nol­o­gy when two images are com­bined at the same time.

DC or Mar­vel super­hero bat­tles or fan­tas­tic scenes with drag­ons from Game of Thrones were filmed against such a back­ground / foto-gamma.ru

Two options for using a green back­ground for win­ter pho­tog­ra­phy:

— Pho­to­shoot in the “sig­na­ture” col­ors of the New Year and Christ­mas. We add red acces­sories that con­trast with the back­ground: San­ta Claus hats, striped socks, scarves, sweaters with rein­deer and oth­er win­ter attrib­ut­es. You can add dark spruce branch­es, branch­es of red mistle­toe. A good option for a group por­trait, when a sim­i­lar col­or scheme and com­mon ele­ments of cloth­ing empha­size uni­ty. By the way, catch more life hacks on shoot­ing a group por­trait.
— Shoot­ing with sub­se­quent post-pro­cess­ing. Chro­makey allows you to quick­ly cut out mod­els and place them on any oth­er back­ground. Plus, there are end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for cre­ativ­i­ty, when the imag­i­na­tion is not lim­it­ed by any­thing. At least add polar bears, at least San­ta Claus. About four ways to cut out the back­ground, this text.

There are fold­ing chro­makeys, which, due to the design, def­i­nite­ly won’t wrin­kle, but it’s more dif­fi­cult to trans­port — such a back­drop weighs 7 kg. The sec­ond option is a fab­ric chro­ma key, which is enough to roll up and throw into a back­pack, like a reg­u­lar rag. But be pre­pared to iron it.

If a green back­ground seems inap­pro­pri­ate — for exam­ple, you have a themed pho­to shoot and a mod­el in a Grinch suit (that is, in green), go from the oppo­site and spend a New Year’s shoot on a red back­ground, plac­ing green accents with clothes and acces­sories.

White photophone

1. Play with con­trasts with a bold look and acces­sories. Cloth­ing with sequins, sequins, but­ter­flies with a themed print, col­ored socks with snow­men, crack­ers, glass­es in the form of Christ­mas trees, tin­sel, New Year’s caps are suit­able. This is a good “par­ty” and cor­po­rate option. In addi­tion, the white back­ground is uni­ver­sal and will def­i­nite­ly come in handy in the future.
2. With the help of dec­o­ra­tions and addi­tion­al attrib­ut­es, go into a fan­ta­sy bias. By using a snow-white back­ground, cre­ate a feel­ing of cold­ness, as if only a snowy bliz­zard is behind the mod­el. This is an option for cre­ative exper­i­men­tal cus­tomers, an unusu­al win­ter chil­dren’s pho­to shoot.

Here are some ideas for a cre­ative New Year’s pho­to shoot on a white back­ground:

• Cre­ate a sem­blance of snow­drifts from phar­ma­cy cot­ton. Add a snow-cov­ered Christ­mas tree to enhance the effect of a win­ter for­est — many stores sell arti­fi­cial Christ­mas trees with a white coat­ing. Eco-friend­ly and then you can put it at home.
• Rent an ani­mal for shoot­ing. For exam­ple, a white or black rab­bit, a fox.
• Arti­fi­cial snow. An option for those who are not afraid that after shoot­ing they will have to wash and wash things. You can cov­er them with clothes, faces of mod­els. Cre­ate the feel­ing that you just came after the bit­ter cold.
• Take a pic­ture of the mod­el sup­pos­ed­ly through the thick­ness of the ice. To do this, you need glass and a spray that imi­tates frost. If you cov­er glass with it, add arti­fi­cial snow and ask assis­tants to hold it, you get the effect as if you are shoot­ing through ice, and the white back­ground will cre­ate the feel­ing that there is only an end­less cold waste­land behind.
• Add col­or to your images. For exam­ple, bright blush, as if the mod­el had just come out of the cold, or high­light the scene with col­or fil­ters. For exam­ple, if you high­light the back­drop with blue, then the white back­ground will turn into soft blue.

black photophone

The black pho­to back­ground is ide­al for light exper­i­ments and just warm shots with an abun­dance of light in the frame. Such a back­ground, com­bined with gar­lands, can­dles, sparklers, will give con­trast­ing and ver­sa­tile shots that both chil­dren and adults will like.

Against the back­grounds of dark col­ors, the beau­ty of the light sources in the frame is revealed. On white, the gar­land would sim­ply be lost / pixabay.com

— Exper­i­ment with slow shut­ter speeds. With it, you can draw pat­terns, lines, snowflakes with sparklers, write “Hap­py New Year” or the num­ber of the com­ing year.
— Make curly bokeh. It can be made bokeh in the form of Christ­mas trees, gifts, snowflakes, gin­ger­bread men, polar bears, stars — every­thing that is enough for imag­i­na­tion. To do this, it is enough to place the same gar­land on a dark back­ground and cut out a sten­cil for the lens. Sim­i­lar­ly, we wrote about how to make curly bokeh here.

New Year’s photo backgrounds with a print

An option for cor­po­rate par­ties, par­ties, New Year’s gath­er­ings, chil­dren’s tea par­ties. Suit­able for group por­traits, semi-reportage shoot­ing, when a large flow of peo­ple pass­es through the pho­to zone. This is con­ve­nient for the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, espe­cial­ly if there is no time for exper­i­ments and indi­vid­ual work with each mod­el. It’s also con­ve­nient for clients – you don’t have to over­pay for scenery, and while the pho­tog­ra­ph­er is busy, you can take self­ies with friends.

Against such back­grounds, self­ies will look fes­tive and atmos­pher­ic even with­out pro­fes­sion­al pho­to light­ing, which can­not be said about chro­ma key, black or white back­grounds.

Pho­to­phones with lights and sparkles are uni­ver­sal — they are suit­able for both fam­i­ly pho­to shoots and par­ties, New Year’s cor­po­rate par­ties / pixabay.com

— Pho­to­phones the­mat­ic. Suit­able for shoot­ing chil­dren, fam­i­ly group por­traits. For exam­ple, a chil­dren’s pho­to back­ground with gar­lands and New Year’s decor in the form of an elk, lumi­nous Christ­mas trees, a gin­ger­bread man, as well as a back­ground with a Christ­mas tree and toys. A fan­ta­sy ver­sion is a back­ground with San­ta fly­ing through the sky on a rein­deer sleigh. For the lit­tle ones, a car­toon-style back­ground with snow­men is suit­able. A fam­i­ly pho­to­phone with a Christ­mas tree and a cozy fire­place or an ana­logue with a Christ­mas tree and gifts. A more neu­tral and min­i­mal­is­tic option, which is also suit­able for New Year’s cor­po­rate par­ties, is a wood-like back­ground, fes­tive­ly dec­o­rat­ed with spruce paws, cones and bells.
— Pho­to­phones with lights. They imi­tate gar­lands, add New Year’s com­fort and warmth. Suit­able for chil­dren’s and fam­i­ly shoot­ings, as well as for group por­traits at cor­po­rate par­ties, friend­ly pho­to shoots.
— Pho­to­phone with sparkles is a uni­ver­sal fes­tive option. For cor­po­rate par­ties, old­er chil­dren or those who want a fes­tive atmos­phere, but are tired of the usu­al attrib­ut­es like a Christ­mas tree and the oblig­a­tory green and red col­ors. Its advan­tage is the breadth of appli­ca­tion — with such a back­ground you can also pho­to­graph birth­days, make cre­ative shoot­ings in fash­ion style.

Additional equipment for photophones and New Year’s shooting

— Rack for back­grounds.
— Light is required for out­door pho­tog­ra­phy. In order not to drag sev­er­al tens of kilo­grams, you can put ordi­nary flash units on racks. And here is a detailed guide on how to use and set up a cam­era flash.
— For flash­es, so that they fire at the same time, you need a syn­chro­niz­er. It is best to choose a radio syn­chro­niz­er or IR. Anoth­er guide is about what kind of syn­chro­niz­ers are and how they dif­fer.
— For fam­i­ly sto­ries, you need soft dif­fused light. Light­weight in every sense and a bud­get option — pho­to umbrel­las.
— Pho­to fil­ters. They will allow you to high­light with col­or, toned a sol­id black or white back­ground, or cre­ate col­ored back­lights so that the mod­el is in con­trast to the back­ground.
— You need a tri­pod for long expo­sures. For infor­ma­tion on what to look for when buy­ing a tri­pod, read this text.