We find more and more amateur and professional photographers choosing to print their work on canvas, rather than traditional photo paper – so we’re helping those interested in the 2 subjects to increase their knowledge to get the very best end result.

As the price of equipment has dropped, more and more photographers are choosing to dip their toes into the world of home studio photography. Our aim in this series of articles is to arm you with the information you need to make informed buying choices ─ and give you the benefit of our years of technical know-how, so you don't make too many rookie mistakes! 

Last week we walked you through the set-up of your infinity curve for an example shoot on grey seamless paper, so please refer to that article before proceeding. Ready? Right, let's go! The good news is that we approach our lighting set-up for a full-length shoot in much the same way as we did in our previous series on headshots at home. 

 Firstly, we rig up our key light with whichever modifier we've chosen ─ in this instance, a 4' octabox ─ and making sure that it's positioned with the octabox over one of the outstretched legs of the light stand, we place it at around 30° to the left or right of our shooting position. Aim to have your key light as high as you can get it, around six feet from your subject, and with your subject at least four feet from the background. This should give you an even spread from head to toe, and a pleasing fall off of light across the background paper.

For now, we'll stick with a single light so that you can see how this affects the subject and background before we add any additional lights. You might find that the results from this simple set-up are so lovely that you'll be happy to shoot like this forever!

As you can see from the image below, a single light source on grey paper can work wonders. You may have to make some trial and error adjustments to your light position in order to ensure an even spread of light, but once you have mastered this simple style, your canvas print output will look classy and professional.

In our next article on this subject, we'll demystify one of the most challenging styles a home studio photographer is likely to attempt ─ the full-length white background shoot. From a technical point of view, it's very tricky to pull of effectively without hours of post production work, but we'll show you some tricks to remove the fear.