Green Is Gone

I know you are all probably sick to death of hearing about my adventures in photography.

Well, too bad, it's my blog. If you want to talk about cats and uncle Fred's back problems, get your own blog...

...just kidding, lighten up! :)

Anyhow...

Our skin, no matter what race we happen to be, is mainly reddish in nature. And looking at the handy-dandy color wheel, we see that the color furthest from red is green. Our skin has almost no green in it, unless of course you are a particular witch from Oz, but if you are then you've got worse problems.

This one property makes green (and yes, blue is close enough) backgrounds very useful. If you record someone in front of a green screen (technically called a Chroma Key screen), you can use computer software to later filter or "key" the green color out, leaving the subject intact with no background. It's then an easy task to add in whatever background you like. Note, the subject cannot wear green, or they will end up with holes in them!

We've all seen it, not just in high budget special effects-laden movies, but on TV weather forecasts. That big map behind Sonny Elliot is just a green screen, all the graphics are added in on the fly by computer. And it's not just for backdrops, you can add green to anything you want to dissapear, that's how they do invisibility cloaks, holes in people, hide wires and cables, etc...just color it green and it's gone!

Many photographers today are using the Chroma Key techniques in their portraits, and I'm sure you can imagine many cool possibilities. No more buying different colored backdrops, just add them in digitally.

This is already being done frequently, and pretty soon I'll be doing it too, because I ordered a Chroma Key green screen today!