Photography Background: DIY Crackle Paint

Here at Luke Photography, it is time to start building new sets and painting new backgrounds for the upcoming senior portrait season.  This year, I've decided to add a few new grungy backgrounds to the options that I have for senior pictures.  One background is authentically weathered and beaten down, the other had to appear that way.

I visited a salvage yard that sells old architectural parts that are taken from buildings that are slated for demolition or major renovation, and purchased couple of pairs of old exterior shutters that are 8 feet tall. Years of sun exposure and weather have cracked, peeled and faded the paint, and they had a beautiful patina on them.  All it took was a wire brush to scrape off the loose paint, and they were good to go.

I acquired five fiberglass interior doors in the past 6 months.  Didn't pay a dime for them.  Three were being thrown out, and I rescued them before they hit the dumpster. The last two doors were near the curb in my neighborhood on trash day.  Score.  Now I had to make them look as old as the shutters, without waiting 80 years.  Yeah, I'm a little impatient.

Attention Amateur Photographers: It's Not About the Camera

I was photographing my local high school hockey team last night and there was a father of a player on the opposing team alongside me.  As photographers secretly always do, we were both sneaking peeks at the other's choice of camera and lenses.  He had a high-end Canon camera and lens, both of which are often seen in the hands of professionals.  He held the camera dearly, shooting and immediately checking the results on the camera's LCD screen, and seemed genuinely interested in why I was just standing there calmly watching the teams warm up, my camera snuggled in my bag.  Surely I couldn't know what I was doing.

During the player introductions, I pulled the camera out, took one test shot, and stood at attention during the national anthem, while he was still shooting and frowning at the results.  Once the game was about to begin, we exchanged pleasantries, and that's when the chat-fest began.  He was having trouble getting good color rendition, exposure, and asked me what I was doing.  I explained that I had previously set a custom white balance for the ice rink so that my colors were perfect, and I know the light levels in the rink, so that my exposures were always consistent.