So far I've written two other posts on some of my photography tricks - Part 1 | Learning from Successful Retailers and Part 2 | Custom backdrops for under $10. Seriously folks, this is what I go bananas for. On to this posts topic - it's a little shorter, but still pretty fun. Wrapping paper. Wheeee!
Wrapping paper is a great backdrop for photos. It's inexpensive and doesn't take up a lot of room or storage.I picked up this roll from Party City for a few dollars but you can find great patterns on Etsy. If you see a colour or, pattern on sale in your travels, grab a roll. It's great to have a bunch on hand. You never know when you may come to need a certain colour.
In terms of creativity, consider colour pallets that work well together. Getting nerdy for a moment. Remember your intro to art in school and where they talked about the colour wheel and, complimentary colours? Where the opposite colours on the wheel is naturally the complimentary colour? It actually goes further than that - there are Analogous colour patterns, Triad patterns and more? There is some science to why colours work well together. Which is why pink and yellow, as I've shown above - really look pretty spectacular. Not that you need to pull out your colour wheel every time you want to create a photoshoot, but it's just interesting that certain colours just work really well together. This is a great page over on Adobe.
If you want patterns, I would think that the smaller the pattern the better if you're shooting something straight on, so not to distract from the product you're shooting. I shoot primarily small things, but if you were shooting kids - wrapping paper does make an inexpensive backdrop!
Take this gorgeous pink striped paper that I picked up - and I put my favourite pink teacup with it. I'm showing this because I don't think it's actually working. The stripes are competing with the cup.
But if I layered more in the photo - a napkin, a cookie, and maybe some tea in the cup then it could work. But overall it's truthfully not my favourite look. I much prefer the solid colour paper. You also have to be a little weary of the sheen of paper, because really you don't want it to look like you're using wrapping paper. The key is to create a nice backdrop for what you want to showcase. Which again is why the solid colours likely are better.
Hopefully some of these posts will give even the most newbie photographer some confidence in trying out some new things. And grab that roll of wrapping paper when it's on sale, because it may be the ticket to a great shot down the road.
Past posts
Part 2 | Custom backdrops for under $10
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