I am always on the hunt for things that will work as easy and interesting backdrops for my photos.  Lately, in Costco, I have seen some large  14×10 calendars that have been fun to use and I thought I would share some of the results here.

My first attempts at using the backdrops were using a black and white calendar with pictures of Paris ( one of my all time favorite places on the planet to visit).  Here are a few photos from those efforts.

Originally the photos were like this with the dolls in color and the background in black and white.

This is very easy to change in photoshop.  Just select Black and White in your color adjusting window and presto chango.  I may have had to tweek the contrast and brightness on these as well but that is also easily done in photo shop.  These ladies are only shown from the waist up as the calendar page backdrop stopped right at waist level.  I think they turned out pretty cool so I attempted to try it with color.

I think the most important thing to remember with these photo backgrounds is scale and lighting.  I hung the calendar pages with tape on a piece of cardboard at the back of my photo tent.  I look through the lens of my camera ( on a tripod) then eyeball whether or not the photo is high enough and the doll placed  an appropriate distance from the photo to give it the right scale.  This is very low tech and fairly easy to do.  Just play with the lighting until it looks right to you and make sure you crop the photo to remove any evidence that it is really a picture in the background.  I realize that all this is so much easier to do in photoshop.  I am having a great deal of fun learning the fun things you can do with that program.  It is, in my opinion, however, a very difficult program to learn and somewhat overwhelming.  If anyone wants to add some splash to their backgrounds….this is one way to do it.  Just wanted to share.

–Rebecca