This is it; my first ever blog post.

After years of shooting on simple colored or white backdrops in studio, I finally decided it was time to step it up; a hand painted canvas backdrop. Canvas backdrop Ben? Are you shooting 90’s school portraits? No silly! Canvas backdrops are used by the industry’s leading photographers; namely Annie Liebovitz in some of her most iconic portraits.

The problem with canvas backdrops is the cost; most companies won’t even list the sale price of their pieces but will give you a rental price for a 3 day period. you know what that translates to? “Sorry, this is most likely out of your price range; how about you rent it for XX dollars and return it when you’re done?”

And with reason, these backdrops are beautifully hand crafted pieces of art, and the materials are super expensive!

Being the DIY lover that I am, I did some research and fell on Philip Vukelich’s generous blog post that gives you a solid walkthrough on the process and materials he used.

Our studio is across the street from a HomeDepot so off we went with my studio-mate Guillaume Larose to buy materials (albeit quite different paint from what was recommended) and went on to paint our first canvas backdrop!

I haven’t had the time to shoot a portrait on the backdrop yet, but something is in the works for next week, in the meantime, enjoy the timelapse I did during the making of! Stay tuned!

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First Post!