Weiß, Blanco, and белый

I have been doing some reading recently and trying to determine the best possible way to shoot against a white backdrop.  There is something about a subject placed against a sheer white background.  The crispness really appeals to me.  Now, there are plenty of ways to Photoshop the background completely white, but that takes plenty of time.  I wanted to find a way to use a low f/ stop slower shutter speed and my speedlites to blow out the background, yet keep enough light for the facial expressions.

I first setup the white linen backdrop, and covered the front half on the floor with a fake fur that I picked up on the cheap from Wal-Mart last week.  The added texture would help with the softness of the look I was going for.  I placed my usual speedlite behind myself, fired down towards using a white shoot through umbrella.  I placed my second speedlite behind the backdrop pointed back towards me shooting through yet another umbrella.  I knew that the linen would help diffuse the light, but wanted additional softness so using the umbrella really help spread the light across the entire backdrop.  I used my 24-70mm f/2.8 L dropped to f/2.8 and set the shutter to 1/100 – 1/125 which helped saturate the image and blow out the backdrop.

Up until this point I had been afraid to use their type of technique because the background just appeared gray and unlit, but I will be using this one again in the future.  The help of a monolight will assist with setting up the shot.