Backdrop Building

During the past month or so I’ve been slowly putting together two backdrops to use for photos. The first of those is an indoor arena, which I had every intention of posting about last week. But after uploading the images to my PC, I noticed an obvious and annoying mistake in almost all of my pictures…

ARGH !@#$ bit!

I wanted to cry because I had taken everything down at that point, and because I had a nasty/nauseating headache, wasn’t in any mood to set it all up again.
I’ve had another headache this weekend, but thankfully it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t try to get some better pictures.

Anyway, backgrounds for photos have been on the List-of-Things-to-Make for uh, many years now. There’s a part of me that wants to start photo showing, (maybe in ten more years I’ll actually make that happen) and my plain white backdrop won’t really work for that.
For an indoor arena, I wanted to go with something simple. Basically, the background is a piece of white foam core, which I sliced down the side and reattached with packing tape, to extend the length:

It’s not perfect, but hey, it works.

The texture was made by printing up an edited image of corrugated metal siding… I printed up several sheets of this, trimmed off the white edges and glued everything in place.

The wooden beams are just wood pieces I’ve had for ages… they came in a pack together and were all the same size. Hooray for not having to saw them down!

Here was a quick test shot – I wanted to make sure it was large enough for my longer horses, and tall enough for both a horse and rider. The black is a piece of black foam core and was just a placeholder. 🙂

The arena wall was made from three wood rectangles I picked up at a craft store. They are held together with scraps of more wood pieces from old projects. (I knew saving those would come in handy, ha!)

For the footing, I went with Kinetic sand. Half of this I picked up nearly a year ago, but found that 2 pounds of it wasn’t enough, and had to pick up some more. I think I’ve got 3 1/2 lbs of it now, and am thinking of picking up another box.

Here’s how it looks all set up:

And up close, with a horse:

It fits my big guy too:

All in all the background was kind of a half-assed project BUT since it’s just a background and is likely to be blurred out anyway, I’m not too bothered with it. I’m pleased with how my photos are looking so far. Today, I made the time to get some fun pictures. You’ll have to pardon my mistakes the rider dolls… they’re not the greatest riders ever and are all in need of surgery and makeovers. 😛

Don’t mind me… just loping around the arena on the wrong lead… *facepalm*

Mini cones are from http://store.rc4wd.com/

Mounting blocks come in handy sometimes. Also, these junior riders mount from the right side of the horse because they do what they want. *second facepalm*

Success! Sort of!

Time to switch riders.

No mounting block needed for this girl…

…whoops.

And that’s why you always check your girth before you get on.

Hope you all have had a good weekend. 🙂