Backdrops for portraits, particularly baby portraits

FrankGrimes

I'm a relative newbie hobbyist photographer but have gotten to grips with most of the basics and am have recently gotten some Yongnuo flashes and am playing around with off-camera flash scenarios (loving it so far!). I have a newborn baby and I plan to do lots of photos of her over the coming years and can see that using a shoot-through umbrella with a nice backdrop will work very well (for starters, am also learning how to introduce other lights to add depth, texture etc.).

Thing is, there's very little clear wall space in my house so it's difficult to get a shot that doesn't have much interference in the background. So I was looking at getting some form of studio backdrop. I figured material from a dress shop would be useful but it seems just as pricey as some of the options I see on Amazon.

So I was looking at getting a stand like this as it's adjustable - I'd keep it in the shed out of the way and set it up to be narrower and shorter in most of my usage.

Seems that the cheap backdrops have creases that are hard to remove so some people recommend using a drawing paper like this. Just wanted to see if anyone has any experience and tips or tricks for might work well (hoping to get a workable portrait solution for under €150).

What colour backdrops do people find most useful? When people use green backdrops are they generally actually using green background in their portraits or changing it in Lightroom/Photoshop?

Anyone used any decorated backdrops like these and found them much good?

Seems a set of clamps like these would also be necessary.

Wabbit Ears

You need a clean floor, A single box of a nice laminate or offcuts of solid/semi solid flooring or even get some pine tounge and groove and artificially age it. You only need a 1m by 1m floor area or so.

You can also get a nice old style length of skirting, glue it to a thin plywood board and wallpaper the board for very little money as a perfect backdrop

Get a 50 or 35 mm 1.4 lens and don't use flash for babies.

Jonnykitedude

camera...50mm....bean bag and a blanket.

AnimalRights

Another rule is try and use the same exposure...Johnnykitedude's pics are not.
#1 and #2 especially are as different as chalk n cheese.

Jonnykitedude

Thanks!!!

Its actually the way I edited them. Anyway why use the same exposure...so what if they are different??

FrankGrimes

Thanks Wabbit Ears, couple of good suggestions there. Good tip on the bean bag there Johnnykitedude, hadn't thought about that.