The Autumn Build

I love building my own newborn photography backgrounds, and the Autumn garden was one of my favourites to create. The idea came to me when I came across the little wheelbarrow, I was out looking for baskets, but when I saw the wheelbarrow I knew I had to make a set for this!

Originally my first idea was to create a summer garden set, with sunflowers, pebbles and a watering can, and I did create this set, but when I got back to the studio I saw the beautiful Japanese Maple tree on the drive I knew I wanted to also make an Autumn background. I cut some branches off and started to build, always taking pictures as I built to make sure it looked right on screen. It was looking great but a little dull, I knew I had different props in the summer set so I thought to my self "what is Autumn" and I went straight outside to the apple tree that had dropped a bunch of shiny red apples! After carefully arranging the apples in the basket I still felt it looked a little empty, standing there looking at the set trying to think what else, it clicked, a brush to clear the leaves! But I didn't want a modern rake or broom, so I went looking for a traditional wicker broom.

Once Everything looked right in the camera I started to work on the lighting, I ended up using three Broncolor flash lights, one being a Para133, this was the main light and the other two I used as fill lighting. I took different brackets, putting the power up on the Para only.

After a long day of building I finally had my Autumn garden newborn background!