Fine Art Photography: The Complete Guide

Lesson Info

Shoot: Wall Paper Image

For this image we're creating a wall paper scene, but the problem is that we don't actually have any wall paper. We don't have any roll of wall paper, we don't have any wall paper on the wall, so what we're going to try to do is make it look like we are in a room that is covered in wall paper, that is also peeling off over the top of our subject. So how do we do that with a bed sheet? The answer is that I'm not sure if I know exactly how to do that with a bed sheet, but we're going to try our best to figure out if it's going to work. So we're going to have our subject standing just like this against the wall and I'm going to put a little bit in post of this texture, this pattern of the wall paper onto her dress so that she really blends in with the scene so that it's almost like the wall that's crumbling around her is taking her into the wall. That's going to be the goal here and it's going to be a fairly simple image to shoot. What I have to get is this wall without any bed sheet on i...

t by itself which I'll get totally separately from our model. I'm going to photograph the wall by itself with this bed sheet on it and then I'm going to photograph our subject standing in here with this bed sheet flopping over top of her so that it looks like there is believable wall paper peeling all around her. I don't know how this one's gonna go, this one's making me a little bit nervous but that's good to try new things, to see if you can work in an environment like this, and try to make it work to your advantage. That's what we're gonna do right now so let's get you over here, barefoot as usual, thank you. And I'm just gonna have you face the wall. Really, really simple, you don't have to do anything. And then I'm going to take a step back, get my settings, and I'm going to shoot this one just as it is to just sorta get a baseline of what my settings need to be, where my focus is. Okay so I'm taking one picture there. I can also go ahead and shoot the floor and images all around the subject. I'm on a 50 millimeter lens, so I'm on a lens right now that allows me to get most of my subject in the shot but not all. So I'm just taking all these extra shots all around just to make sure that I have all the pieces of the floor that I might need to composite later. So now that we've got this image, I'm going to go ahead and pose our model, see if we can get the wall paper to flop over top of her, and this will be quite simple in the end, hopefully. So I want your hands, in fact, actually just down by your sides. And I'm gonna have you lean your head back, that was really good. And aside from that, I'm gonna get one like this, just to make sure that I have the pose and everything, but then I'm just gonna let this bed sheet loose to fall over her head and it's going to seem very, very ridiculous, and it might end up ridiculous, but I have high hopes, so let's get in position. Really simple image to start. Perfect. And now I'm going to let the wall paper down. Oh, we're doing so well. (chuckles) Here, hold that (chuckles). This is good. Okay. Here we go. This is pretty absurd. We'll see how it goes. So I'm just going to drape this here. We'll drape this here. And this is actually what I'm looking for is this line to create a believable shadow where the wall paper might fall as well as to just have some of that texture and the natural shadows of the curve of the fabric. I'm gonna lift this up just a little bit. Okay and I'm just trying to show through some of the dress and the hair so we have a little bit of context. And if you wouldn't mind, you're leaning your head back right? Yeah, okay great, she's leaning her head back. And I'm just making sure that the fabric looks nice, just that it has a nice shape to it. And I like that. So I'm going to shoot that piece. Good. Okay. So that's super simple. We've got our subject with the bed sheet. You can relax, take the bed sheet off your head, and then you can step aside and I'm just going to shoot this blank wall now because that's the one thing that I haven't gotten that I need to get, because this will be my room in the end. Right now it's not looking so good because we have blue pieces of tape, so if I weren't as lazy as I am I would probably come over and remove all these blue pieces of tape, but I know that I can get rid of that later, so I'm going to take a step back, shoot this scene. I'm not changing my focus so I'm just getting back in the same spot that I was. And I'm going to shoot each portion of this wall that I can get in my frame, which is not very much because I'm on that 50 millimeter lens in this space. And then I'm just making sure I have everything. I'm at ISO 250 for this one, I decided to raise it up a little cuz it's dark in here. F 2.5 and 100 for my shutter speed. And that's it, so this one's going to be a lot in post to see if it will come together, if it will not. I'm probably going to have to find an image of actual wall paper just to get a more realistic look, but at least we have the basics of what we need to be able to put it together later.

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