The Background

The background is crucial. It adds depth to the model and, if done well, makes it even more realistic. Here too, I drew on the experience documented on the Buzzaceto model website. Initially, I thought it would be a very difficult mission for several reasons: I'm not an expert photographer, I don't have a reflex camera, and I don't know how to use photo editing software.

Despite these difficulties, I took up the challenge and decided to create my own custom background. I love the Dolomites, but living in Brianza, they're a bit far away. However, we have Mount Resegone, which I love, so I thought I'd take some photos of the mountains above Lecco. I borrowed my sister Lucia's Canon and then equipped myself with a professional Sony tripod that we used for an old video camera. I explored various locations and soon settled on the southern slope of Mount Barro, a mountain located directly opposite Mount Resegone. I chose a ridge with a 360-degree unobstructed view of the vegetation.

The next problem was the lighting and weather conditions. I failed three times on a mission because the conditions weren't satisfactory, until the fourth time when the weather was at least acceptable.

Before going on the mission, I had studied the necessary resolution. The backdrop had to be 6 meters long and 1.35 meters high. For printing, a minimum resolution of 120 DPI was required so that the pixels wouldn't be visible from a minimum distance of about one and a half meters. This constraint had been given to me by the printing company, so I would have to take many high-resolution photos and then stitch them together to create a single image with the appropriate resolution.

Without the right tools, it's not easy; I proceeded empirically, using a tripod to move the camera in two partially overlapping horizontal passes, each with seven photos for a total of 14 high-resolution photos. It wasn't easy, especially since the lighting conditions can sometimes change between the first and last photo. I finally managed to take the 14 photos with similar lighting and acceptable weather.

The challenge now was to assemble them without any photo editing experience. In 2022, AI wasn't that advanced yet, but I found a free Microsoft software online that did just the job, even correcting the distortion caused by the camera's rotation. The result was satisfactory but not exceptional, and I initially considered taking it out again, but then I showed the photo to two modeling friends who said they thought it was perfect.

The final step was printing, which I had done on a PVC banner using a well-known online printing service. I must say that the process was very simple once the final photo was created in PDF or JPG format.

The banner was mounted on the wall using a staple gun on fir strips previously secured to the wall with dowels. This was done at the top, bottom, and both ends. In the corner, I made sure to mount the banner curvedly, without any sharp edges. To finish everything off, I applied a white plastic frame over the slats in the visible parts, which I fixed above the banner with Bostik Polymax High Track.