DIY Backdrops for Food Photography II

**********DIY Backdrops for Food Photography**********

 I'm in the man cave today and I'm going to be making some custom backdrops for when I take pictures you know to make it look a little bit more fancy a little a bit more snazzy I got the idea to got the inspiration from Jimmy at the bite shot and I'm gonna also put a little link on here to see how she does her the thing I'm just gonna take some ideas and make my own okay so the idea is a compound like these stuff that you put on your wall its matte put that all along with a piece of plywood and then apply some different paints and textures I'm doing smaller ones because I take my pictures are usually like after dinner and I put a light on it and I'll put it right on my dinner table so I usually kind of do the overhead shots or I might do a side shot but I don't need a big giant photography like a backdrop board. 

So I'm making like mini versions of it today it's a two day process the first day you're gonna put down the compound and make your textures and let it sit and cure then you're gonna add your pain your textures you can use different brushes different styles and just be really creative with gonna do a dark board and a lighter board and I also have a little bit of like a robin's egg blue to play with and the reason I'm using blue because of blue contrasts with orange and brown food predominantly is orange or brown you're gonna get a lot of oranges and brown food so the contrast is like the light blue to make it pop you know I'm just gonna start sharing all this stuff with you I think I have so much fun on the backend of things I'm like learning how to you know make my pictures better or my video better and I totally believe in lifting each other up and we can all learn from each other so I'm going to share stuff that's working for me okay I got them all done couple tips on how to apply it so all the stuff cost me about 60 bucks for the paint and all the wood and the compound may be 70 ohs you're gonna use back through the knife I think this is what this is called and you don't drop a lot of it on think about it like icing a cake you don't want the wood showing you don't want the cake showing right so you just put that thin layer of icing make sure it covers every little piece of wood want it too thick or too textured because your plates might not sit flat once it's all on then gently very lightly hold the brush just kind of go across so you're creating some the texture I don't like hard lines I want it to be very random that's just my the style so I went kind of I went one way I went another way and then I kind of played with it a little bit I'm gonna spend too much more time with it because then I'll just I'll overdo it so I'm just gonna little and I'm gonna let it drop crap and clean up my pants too might want to wear an apron or a crappy pair of pants just in case okay so here we are day two they're all dry nice matte finish the only thing.

 I can see is this one over here is a little thicker and it's got a little the tiny bit of a bow to it oh this one is flat so it has a thinner amount of the plaster so something that you can figure out you know this is a thin piece you can go a little bit thicker on the wood so that way it will not bow I'm gonna use these are my first go at it and I'm gonna start painting them yeah a little housekeeping reminder here make sure you're in a well-ventilated the area I'm gonna move out of here because I don't want to get paint on the boat also wear some clothes that you're okay with getting a little bit of paint on okay so plan here is to do one of them keep it really light the second one I'm gonna will have grayer gray white and this one I'm gonna do darker to have contrast and a difference so based on the type of food or the dish certain dishes and certain colors go better with light or dark you know like if you have cauliflower rice, for example, you're not going to want to put cauliflower rice on white background so you're not gonna see it especially like a white flakes white cauliflower rice kinda way you will have zero contrast and the another side of the coin if I had something really dark like mushrooms or the Portobello sandwich or something you know that really dark color brown dude color brown I would use a lighter color for that contrast okay so here I am out in the Sun it's gorgeous companies gloves and I'm going to use I have a couple of shop rights to help kind of with paint so far what do you think I like the black one black eye all of them are made to paint the dark gray on first and then I went over with a little bit of white here and there I used my gloves and every time it kind of got a little too blotchy on the spray paint look that really lights robin's egg blue and just kind of did the same thing with my gloves just kind of rubbed it in as soon as I put the paint on to diffuse it a little bit and then this one. 

I'm really just gonna keep this white straight white with the texture itself okay now they're all done and the last thing is a finish an enamel finish so I'm gonna put this all over all of they and it is a matte finish and then we're done that's a wrap - this isn't the ideal situation I've got a total glare in my eyes but it is what it is this is how you learn so I hope you enjoyed this I will be doing more of these as things come along and you know here a fellow food blogger or you know you take photographs of you to know stuff in your kitchen maybe you can use this too I'll see you next time on Don loves food.