A hand-painted photography backdrop

Last month I attended a small workshop led by Toria Britten of Wildly Beautiful Flowers in Somerset. The aim of the one-day course was to learn how to paint backdrops to use for floral photo shoots. Using a backdrop - rather than a plain white wall - can lend extra colour or textures or a certain mood to photos as well as help the photos of a business or brand to be easily recognised on social media. A backdrop (if not too cumbersome) can also be moved around to where the light is best which is a huge pro for me!

I went to the course with very limited experience of creative painting and blending of paints to achieve complex colours and tones. I was very hesitant with my paints at first, but Toria - who is a great teacher - encouraged me to experiment with different colours and blending techniques until I achieved this swirling purple and grey canvas:

The next day, I experimented with a few fresh and dried flowers in front of my new backdrop. The phlox below were photographed without the backdrop (left - against a white wall) and with the backdrop (right). I really love how the purple brings some warmth to my photos as opposed to the white wall. I’ve been taking lots of floral photos with the backdrop and amazingly, I have yet to find a flower colour that doesn't work with the purple. I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of this backdrop in future photos and blog posts!