01/13/2022
Mande Wickham, Owner - MxM Photography, Wichita Falls, TX
"Setup & Prep for Background Extractions with Purephotos.app"
As a high volume youth league photographer, I have found myself in some sticky spots when photographing massive amounts of children in short periods of time. I actually came across https://purephotos.app/ as my green screen background flew like a kite and broke within ten minutes of setup for cheer and football photos. The wind was awful that day and the location I was in did not allow for any sort of cover. I made an executive decision to set up against a brick wall in the only wind cover I could find. After scouring the internet, no background removal option could cleanly extract my images around the find blonde hair and pompoms. Purephotos saved my rear and my job! While I don’t suggest throwing the background options away, I know now I do have the option for traditional backgrounds as well as knockouts when using Purephotos!
My indoor setup includes a 7x5 white backdrop, two kicker lights (one on each side), the main light, and a tripod. I use large rectangle softboxes on my kickers and a 42” octabox on my main light. The sidelights are angled slightly behind the subject and are used to light fall off shadows from the main light to allow a clean pull from the white backdrop. The main light is used to light the subject. I have each subject stand between the kicker lights with the main light above and angled down towards them.
For outside images, I typically just use the main light with the sun behind and slightly to one side. The main light stays on the opposite side to be used as a fill. When deciding where to set up, the sun placement must be factored in. Ideally, there is some open shade for even lit images but in the event there is not, I specifically look for contrasting colors and as clean of a background as possible. A football field and scoreboard are 100% better than photographing in front of a cluster of bare tree branches. While you will still get a nice extraction, there is much more need for the .psds to allow for cleanup.
When dialing in equipment settings, I take into account where I am at for lighting, but almost always shoot at f/10 with either a blank white backdrop about three feet away or a clean, contrasting background as far away as possible. For example, for traditional football photos, I have no shade. I choose to stay on one team's touchdown side with the sun going down behind the bleachers and shoot towards the scoreboard at a football field length away. I keep my shutter speed at 200-250 (max for my light to sync) and my ISO as low as possible. I prefer to keep my main light about 1/8-1/4th power and my kickers between 1/16-1/8th power.
