How to take a good photo on a black background?

Every photographer who is engaged in studio shooting may face the situation of shooting black objects on a black background. The plot may be very different: it can be a photo of an object, a black-haired animal, or a creative portrait painted in black. Either way, the photographer needs to achieve the main goal-to avoid the obvious failure of details and the excessive integration of objects and backgrounds. By skilled technical methods, shooting dark objects on a dark background will make you get very fashionable photos.

First, let us know what black is. By definition, black is the darkest color, because there is no or complete absorption of visible color. For each of us, black represents complete darkness-in the RGB system, it is not surprising that black is represented by three zeros (0,0,0). Imagine if the background and the subject itself were black. You may have guessed that they will merge into a black dot. Therefore, as photographers, our first task is to visually distinguish the theme from the background. There are several ways to do this.

First, the backlight operation

The easiest way to visually "eliminate" a black object from a black background is to add a backlight to the frame, that is, to create a visible outline at the edge of the object to separate it from the background.

In this figure, the Haenszel expert D500 monomer module with three pulses is immediately used as the control light source. One antenna with reflector is hung on the top and back, forming a small "hat" on the head, and the other two antennas with peeling boxes are located on the back, forming other contours. Please note that black actively absorbs light, so you may need more light sources than usual to create a visible outline. Please note: in the area where the light strikes the object, the color is no longer completely black, but gray. The force and brightness difference of light appear on the object, and finally form the required volume in the picture. Related to this, I didn't start to highlight the black areas of the dog, such as all the black areas on the forehead.

In this case, the light should always be set from the controller. So first, with the help of backlight, I removed the model from the background, created a volume on the side, and then illuminated the area I needed with painting light, and filled the shadow with reflector.

The nozzles of the backlight can use very different nozzles. Photographers often use narrow frames on the "back door" side; Because the top lighting scheme will be different according to different tasks. When using backlight, it should be avoided-for this reason, cells or black marks that help focus the light beam are needed to cut off unnecessary light.

Second, it causes the brightness difference between the object and the background.

As I said above, if the subject and background in the picture are black, they will merge into a point, so we need to separate them visually. In addition to using backlight, this separation can also be achieved by the conventional brightness separation between the object and the background: in other words, we can light the background and the object itself at the same time. Usually, in this case, the subject is slightly brighter than the background. Remember, the viewer should first pay attention to the brightest part of the image, and it will be strange to choose a boring background as the focus. In addition, if the object has a texture that must be displayed in the frame, you should avoid using a bright "background".

In this case, they are accurately separated from the background by the brightness difference-the black on the face is so strongly highlighted that they are emphasized when necessary. In addition, the background color is slightly lighter, which also helps to separate the object from the background.

Third, the use of background lighting.

When shooting black objects on a black background, using background lighting is actually another option to produce brightness differences. But usually when using backlight, we will emphasize the required background without affecting the overall background. For example, you have the following tasks: You need to visually separate the face of the model in the portrait from the background. To this end, we installed a standard cell reflector, put the light source behind the model and emit light in the background of the required area. At the same time, try not to use too bright spots, otherwise it will attract all your attention.

Using the above shooting skills, you can highlight the theme in a dark background-this is the so-called method of shooting dark objects in a dark background. This type of shooting is not complicated, but it needs constant practice to get the ideal effect.