Is Black the new Black?

The latest trend in event and party photography seems to be shooting people in front of a black backdrop with side lighting. The style is similar to Film Noir and is being called "Pellier Noir" after Pellier Noir Events who use it and there are various courses and lectures you can attend to learn how to shoot this way.

Photomart offer a talk on the subject by Paul Rogers on February 25th, and Ian Griffith at Event Photos has courses running. Speak to Paul Rogers at www.pellierevents.co.uk to book a very useful training course!

It's an interesting style and if done properly produces dramatic and moody photographs. It's fascinating that Photography goes through cycles like fashion or music, and this is going right back almost to the very beginning.

If you look at early Victorian photographs you will see dark backgrounds and side lighting that produce the same effect. That's because they had little control over depth of field and lighting. So the backgrounds were dark, and the light was usually through a side window from the North. Even the early portrait painters used this style way before photography was invented.

To produce this effect you need a black background and some remote side lighting. With clever lighting you don't actually need a black backdrop, but it's far easier with one. You don't want direct flash on your camera so you need to use a remote trigger or sync cables to fire your off-camera flash or strobes.

We offer everyone who books us for an event or party the choice of high key white backdrops, Black velvet backdrops or green screen. In fact we can bring all three to an event. Or using green screen technology we can replicate high or low key shoots by replacing the green with black or white! We also offer instant digital makeovers using software familiar to magazine and fashion editors.

You are welcome to reproduce this article in your blogs as long as you credit us at www.fullframevents.co.uk .