What's wrong with these next two pictures? Study them with your photographer's eye and think about what doesn't look right.
We've done some studio tests to demonstrate some backdrop photography teaching points. In our opinion, one of the main problems with the above pictures is that they lack RIM LIGHT around the body and hair. The backdrop image seems to suggest that the lighting is coming from behind them, from behind the hill. In a natural setting (even if you had a strobe providing front lighting) it would still produce a little bit of rim light around the hair and body (like the pictures below).
So, how do we duplicate this type of lighting in the studio? Well, simply enough we can just put the lighting behind the subject (on the side of the backdrop) pointed toward the camera. In the below picture we achieved a little bit of that effect on the right, but did not achieve it completely because there was not a similar lighting on the left.
If you only have one strobe to work with, you could stand the subject more in front of the soft box (like you see in the picture below)...
...and then to quickly and easily black that area out, you can use the lasso tool to select the soft box area, hit "x" to toggle the black and white, and then click apple-delete to black out that area. You can then use the patch tool a little bit to make it look natural.
As you can see though, we have a strobe on both sides, presenting a little light on the subject's face. It also makes lighting on both sides sometimes look similar to the rim light we would get if the light were coming from the window behind (as we see in the backdrop image). The below picture is just sort of another studio concept shot, nothing too artistic or special about it, but it also shows how you can do very "normal" types portrait shots with this versatile backdrop.
So if you put the proper lighting on two sides, it looks much like it would if you had some natural light coming in from the window behind (even though it's only a backdrop).
Again, just a few seconds of retouch and the lighting is gone.
And this versatile backdrop is great for senior shots, or any more traditional shots you might want even with older adults. It's also great because it sort of provides two different scenes. You can shoot shots with the phone booth, or without it (like the couple shot above).
