DIY Tips for Making Your Own Backgrounds

Does winter have you climbing the walls looking for something to do? Do you need some new or more interesting backgrounds for your food or product photography? Well then perhaps this DIY project is just the thing for you.

Each November I photograph a series of Italian cookies for our Italian travel company’s 12 Days of Cookies ad campaign. This year I wanted to photograph all the shots from overhead and didn’t want them to be all Christmas themed, so I knew I was going to need some new backgrounds. While searching the internet for ideas, I came upon this great video from The Bite Shot on making your own DIY backgrounds for food photography.

Of course, as the video points out, many companies are producing excellent backgrounds that you can order, but these can become expensive when you need various backgrounds. So creating some of your own backgrounds not only helps keep your expenses down, but it also permits you to have one of a kind backgrounds to the style, color, and textures that you want. And of course, doing it yourself helps to keep your expenses low. I developed ten different backgrounds over a weekend for less than $100. I found the experience to fun, as it permitted me to be creative in a different way from my usual photography.

While the video is focused on food photography, the backgrounds don’t have to be limited to food photography. I’ve used a couple of the backgrounds I created for the cookie shoot for other product photography.

Douglas Turney's picture

Doug Turney is a Connecticut based photographer who specializes in non-ball sport types of photography such as motocross, sailing, and cycling. But that doesn’t stop him from shooting other types of photography too. Doug believes photography is photography and doesn’t like to be typecast. Doug loves to travel and often shoots when traveling.

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3 Comments

Who's going to tell her she got some paint in her hair?

Totally agreed. Even if you always find people who create (and sell) stuff for you such as backdrops - as you photographer you have to be creative and invest time to your craft.

And one good thing to start is to create by yourself what you need. Just finding a solution to a problem! (...and not buying stuff to fill a gap between you and creativity).

Great sharing Douglas Turney .
Thanks!

Why am I just seeing this now I need to use this for all of my product shoot