Black background 'hanger' shots, round 2!

PVO_Dave

Posted a thread a while back on how I get these type of shots:

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/754/21751738010_352704d39b_k_d.jpg

I've since moved house and don't have the luxury of a garage room or a wall I'd be happy to permanently leave them black background setup. 

So, I had an idea to make a temporary one that would be easy to use whenever needed (also handy for pictures of my daughter of course ). 

The parts needed:

1x Door

3x rolls of self adhesive 'velour' material from Wilko's (still waiting to be delivered)

Then these bits;

http://i.imgur.com/G3pZFgV.jpg

(Door hangers, hinge, screws/bolts, guitar hanger)

The idea being, the inside of the door will be black all the time, but the guitar hanger will only be deployed as needed

First step, mark out where to drill, I rested the hinge on the door hangers in situ to mark out where to drill on the hangers using the existing holes in the hinge. I then used one existing hole on the hinge for the guitar hanger, marked out where the second hole should go and drilled that. 

I drilled the holes, bolted it all together and took off the extra material on the screws with a hacksaw, finishing off the sharp ends with a bastard file. 

http://i.imgur.com/XIwZFxu.jpg

Here it is in place;

http://i.imgur.com/RprSbXH.jpg

Testing with a bass;

http://i.imgur.com/RL1NweP.jpg

Once the background material turns up next week, I'll cover the door, the hinge, the guitar hanger and modify the guitar hanger to remove the rubber. 

I'll then do some sample shots to share, including the photoshop steps needed. 

Dave. 

PVO_Dave

Background material arrived early on in the week, but this is the first time I've had a chance to do anything with it

I start off by covering the door, it would probably be easier to buy enough to do the whole door (and look neater), but I clearly don't measure anything, so I've just got enough for my needs

Here's it all in place:

As you can see, I've also covered the door handle, this might not have been needed, but it'll remove any unwanted reflections. I cover the hinge and guitar hanger base in the material, remove the rubber from the parts of the hanger the guitar rests on too:

Here it is with a guitar (well, almost!) in place:

Here's that same picture edited just on the iPhone (so just the room light and natural light from the window):

PVO_Dave

I get the studio (£28 constant on's from eBay) lights setup and camera on a tripod:

This is that resulting image:

I then edit the image in pretty much exactly the same way as in this thread:

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/53163/black-background-professional-guitar-photos-round-2

The only additional step is to remove the bit of guitar hanger you can see on the left hand side of the headstock, to do that, I use the colour match tool and fill in the gaps in a new layer, doing it this way means you can make brush strokes and then use the eraser tool to cut them down to the right size / shape, on this guitar I used two different colours, one for the shadow, one for the wood.

Here it is

If I was doing this on a picture I wanted to do something with, I'd have spent more time making sure the guitar was dead on to the camera / tripod. I've also got to work on the positioning of the lights as the space on the right is obviously very tight. I'll get that right before I photograph my new bass.

Hope that's helped someone, let me know if you've got any questions.

Dave.

TTony

It certainly works well to get pro standard results.

stickyfiddle

YMMV but the natural light one works much better for me; the reflections on the scratchplate are a bit distracting in your final one.

Sarge

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

JezWynd

Excellent work, very ingenious workaround. I too slightly prefer the natural light version. Perhaps a layer of spun over the umbrellas to soften it out a touch more if space is an issue?

PVO_Dave

Thanks for the comments. Definitely need to do something to reduce the reflection, just tried with a reverse umbrella (with the reflective material) with a white 'reflector' over it, but still shows up - I'll get thinking.

Natural light is always the fall back, just with the shutter open longer

TTony

You could just put the background material onto a piece of mdf, fix the guitar hanger to the mdf, and then you've got a more portable version, easier to position for better lighting options

?

PVO_Dave

TTony said:

You could just put the background material onto a piece of mdf, fix the guitar hanger to the mdf, and then you've got a more portable version, easier to position for better lighting options

?

That was my first thought, but wanted to keep this as compact (I.e. nothing else to store) as possible. It's just a matter of finding the best position for the lights

Done a version I'm happy enough with of the bass now

BigMonka

Great work Dave, that last picture looks quality. And thanks for sharing your method