Seamless Paper
Seamless Paper
Today we are talking about one of my favorite purchases for smash cake sessions and of course I'm talking about: seamless paper.
Now a lot of you have been doing smash cakes for a while and you're like "duh, seamless paper, I get it, I get it" but for you guys I do have a secret tip somewhere buried in this post.
I want to talk to you about seamless paper, specifically why I love it. We're going to start with the fact that seamless paper is a great way to create timeless, beautiful, classic images that are never going to go out of style. If you have a client that is looking for something simple and beautiful and elegant, the best thing you can do is start with a roll of seamless paper. Now I recommend always starting with something neutral and then adding props to it, much in the same way that you would take a neutral couch and use poppy accent pillows.
Not only can you use it for cake smash pictures, of course, you have it here for the cake smash sessions but if you need to shoot headshots on it, or YouTube videos or family portraits you can do that as well, so it is a great resource for all of you out there that are just starting out. Maybe your budget is a little limited. I would definitely look at seamless paper first before, over backgrounds. Backgrounds tend to be the 'one use' type of situation - they tend to be a little ‘one note’, so if it’s a wood painted background the you're stuck doing a wood theme shoot. Now if you have gray, of course you can dress it up like I said. So, definitely start looking at seamless paper before you start looking at all those cute, fun backgrounds that you see everywhere.
The next thing that I love about it is that it's clean, what I mean by that is that it's easy to clean. You get clean, classic images and when you are all done smashing the cake all over it, you basically hit it with a pair of scissors, wad it up, throw it in the trash and you are set, ready to go for the next client. This means no fuss, no muss and no backdrops with frosting stains on them.
Now they (seamless papers) do come in a million different colors. We use Superior and Savage Papers, those are our paper suppliers and both of those suppliers offer a brochure that has every color that they possibly make in it. I'm going to go ahead and include those links and I want you to travel over there, spend 6 dollars on buying one of those brochures from each one of those companies and then the next time you are out prop shopping you can take those with you. This is going to do is save you a lot of time and frustration because you're going to be able to take that prop and take that guide, put them together and know that that prop is going to go with the color of the paper that you either have or that you plan on ordering. It's going to save you time, it's going to save you frustration.
SUPERIOR PAPER GUIDE: https://amzn.to/2YoiIYB
SAVAGE PAPER GUIDE: https://savageuniversal.com/products/seamless-paper/seamless-paper-color-chart/
Now, once you know that prop is gonna match, you're gonna check out our Pro Shop where we have a list of all of the papers that Superior and Savage make. Now, the beautiful part about that is on our website those are all Amazon links so all of you Prime members are going to get that roll of paper shipped directly to your front door in about two days. So, no need to cram an 107” roll of paper into your mini cooper, just get it shipped right to your front door. The Smash Cake’s Pro Shop
The next beautiful thing about seamless paper is that you can get multiple shoots out of them and use them for multiple things. We get anything between 3 and 7 cake smash sessions out of one roll of paper. And at the time of this post a roll will run you anywhere between $50 and $100. As long as you're charging a small session fee you definitely have enough money to cover the cost of your seamless paper. Those paper guides are wonderful, I want you to order them, and I want you guys to think about what you could do with seamless paper.
One of my favorite tricks, one of the things we do here a lot is we do color on color on color. We take a roll of seamless and we roll it all the way out so that the floor is one color, let's just say, for example, here, is this one the floor is purple, the background is purple, the balloons are various shades of purple, the dress is purple, we did purple on purple on purple. It looks amazing. I like this look. It's great to do it with gray, it's wonderful to do it with yellow or greens, just that color on color on color can be really, really fun and it's a great look.
So the next time you want to try something different, try the color on color on color. It's probably one of the cheapest sets you can build. The balloons cost nothing, the paper costs nothing, you're pretty just in it for the outfit. So it is one great way of making an elegant photo without spending a whole lot of money.
There you go, I hope all of these tips help, I hope I've convinced you that seamless paper is the way to go. It's not the only way to go, we do use other methods backdrops here, but if I was just starting out I definitely would go the seamless paper route first.
- Daniel