Tips for Full Body Poses

Tips for Full Body Poses

Full body poses are becoming very popular these days. They’ve always been used by sports photographers, but more and more they are being used by school photographers as a way of building virtual groups (more on this in a future blog post). They present a unique set of challenges when it comes to background removal that may not be exactly what you thought.

SWEEP BACKGROUNDS

Evenly colored backgrounds like sweeps give the best results. The sweep should be smooth with no obvious seam. If you need to tape two pieces together, place the tape on the back so the camera can’t see it. Use a sweep for best background removal results if you intend to use the entire full body pose in your final product.

COMPOSITIONS

Shoot or crop so the background extends through the entire frame. Having a tiny background with lots of things visible outside it but still in the frame isn’t the ideal way to shoot for background removal. The goal is to have a consistent, clean background throughout the entire frame.

SETUP

Your subject should be at least 4 feet from the vertical part of the sweep. Placing the subject too close to the background could result in dark shadows and unnecessary spill on your subject. Follow our recommended setup for best results.

STANDING POSITION MARKER

If you’re using something on the sweep to indicate where the subject should pose, make it as small and close to the background color as possible. If the subject's feet can cover it completely, that’s best. A contrasting color can require extra work in the CloudKO editor to get excellent results.

HAIR & RIM LIGHTS

Avoid hair and/or rim lights. Hair lights can mean any light directed towards the camera from behind the subject. Lighting from this angle can overexpose the edge of your subject which may be problematic for background removal AI, and people!

IN SUMMARY

Achieving perfect background removal results on full body poses is possible if you follow the 5 tips above. As always, we recommend testing your setup using our Image Analyzer and someone from our customer success team will work with you to perfect your full body setup.