On or off camera lighting and things

Glow 42" collapsible beauty dish to the left of subject
Glow 34" collapsible beauty dish camera right feathering
Inspirational cancer survivor who never stopped training through his entire battle with cancer in front of seamless black paper
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@Bobby Tingle
How large/small is your studio space?
Please describe your backdrops
Thanks,
Apollo T.
It depends on where I am working. When we do the portraits of the musicians. It’s usually done at bar which focuses on live music ran by a friend of mine. The area I shoot in there has a stage, a bar, and large area to work in.

My other portraits are done in home. Either mine, at a friend’s who uses his apartment as a small studio, or in the person’s home. The working space averages 7’x8’. Sometimes smaller, other times a little larger. You don’t need a large space to shoot portraits.

I use backdrops made by Kate Backdrops. They are either 5x7 or 8x8. I also use a V Flat as a backdrop quite often. With a V Flat you can work in a really small space if needed. And occasionally I will use seamless paper backdrops.
 
@Apollo T.
It's a gray Wescott 9x10 wrinkle resistant.
Basically a large fleece sheet. Has a rod holder on top and I use small clamps to stretch the sides.
Works pretty good in keeping wrinkling and reflections to a minimum.

I drop a digital backdrop in post and use the overlay/soft light blending modes in PS.
Place digital drop layer, set blending mode.
Quick select the gray back first layer.
Blur to remove texture of fleece if necessary.
Invert selection and mask digital drop layer.
Fine tune and other adjustments.

The gray with overlay is forgiving and doesn't require much detailed mask work as long as the digital drops are pretty close in tonal value.
And if they aren't a brush here and there usually does the trick.
It's not close to a real painted backdrop and more work but it's fun, affordable and adds quite a lot of flexibility.
 
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