What is the trick to getting bright white back grounds?
Scotty wrote: Use a white background.
You typically for a normal portrait use a main and a fill light on your model.
For the background use 2 lights and blow out the background. Don't use softboxes, just dishes to spread the light. Meter the ratios about 1 to 2 stops above your main light, and keep going up till you blow out the background.
Unless you want a non-blown out white, then just bring down the power.
Spot on Scotty, this is what I do for my portrait shoots in the kids nurseries, I set up my background and rear lights first, one iether side of the screen, I have barn doors on and the closest barn door to me is used to prevent any light spill onto the subject, the others are pulled right back out of the way as not needed, switch the lights on, and set them so they cover the whole background the light from both lights should meet somwhere in the middle doesnt matter if they overlap a bit, my camera is set to manual, 1-25th @f8, this is my starting point, I then test shoot and with my camera set on showing the highlights, so when I look at the reear screen I can see what is blown out, I can see exactly what needs adjust, once I am happy with the background then I can concentrate on the subject.
hope this helps
www.dcimages.org.uk
"A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective." - Irving Penn
Quite often, if it's a serious shot I'll use the pen tool to cut it out and just replace the background with white.
Example of using the pen tool:
Skater by Stealthy Ninja , on Flickr
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