In Which a Revelation is Revealed

Well, it actually is one revelation and one head-smack (which could be 'spun' into a revelation if I was so inclined, but I'll call it what it is - a head-smack).   For those of you without a scorecard, I have been trying to get brilliant white backgrounds.  Particularly with the holidays (read: holiday cards) coming up, I thought it would be really nifty to have some pictures of the girls in bright red bows with a cheesy Christmas present prop or two on a brilliant white background for our holiday photos.  But for all eternity, my white background has always been blue or grey.  After much reading (Google, I love you), I came to the conclusion that my idea about lighting the background separately from the subjects (aka The Consumers of Liver Treats) was right, but my lighting wasn't bright enough.  So, I came up with the idea of using my flashes to light the background, and using the strobe to light the Liver Treat Consumers.

And an ah-ha moment was born.

But for the head-smack.  In my further research, some blogger suggested using masking and levels in Photoshop.  Basically, the idea is to use the levels adjustment to crank the white levels all the way up, and use masking to keep the subjects' (aka The Consumers of Liver Treats) colors/contrast the same.  Duh.  Why didn't I think of this?  Well, I didn't, but as soon as I read it, I had the head-smack moment.

Don't let Abby's face fool you - she's just miffed that Fi is sitting in front of her.

Maybe not quite enthusiasm, but not outright disdain.  I think....

In the end, the studio shots came out as planned, with significantly less post-processing work.  Now I just have to get my Liver Treat Consuming subjects to actually pose the way I'd like them to!  Oh, and for those of you curious about the bows, they are just cheap bows from Walmart tied on to (now) cheap red collars (in some photos you'll notice one of Fi's old collars - I decided the red collars looked more festive and for $2/collar, it was worth it in the name of art).

Day 314/365.