Making A Rustic High Key Background

When Gavin decided he wanted to shoot high key portraits in a very small space he wanted to a background that was a little different for the usual pure white seamless look. So I was tasked with creating a more rustic looking light background and I do love a challenge!

To keep cost down the plan was to re-use Gavin’s favourite grey paper background that had seen better days. I took a sample of the long roll of grey paper and tried out a few methods. Originally I was convinced a chalk coating would be perfect. Well, it looked pretty good but took quite a bit of elbow grease and loads of chalk. But the huge downside was that it smudged and dusted everything in a layer of chalk dust! Not ideal, so back to the drawing board (literally).

I have loads of white paint (most walls are white in the house) so thought a rough coating of paint would be worth a try out. Now, paper and wet paint would not be a great combination, the paper would change shape and be difficult to work with, so I used a dry brushing technique. This is where you dip the paint brush in the paint and then wipe off the excess on kitchen paper towels and then paint what’s left onto the background. This means that it goes on practically dry and doesn’t cause the paper to buckle. Perfecto!

We shot a time lapse, I think it makes me look like I work really quickly and efficiently!! The camera never lies…………

The shoot day was brilliant. We worked with Gracie for the first time, she totally got the idea and it all worked like a charm with the background.