Because I'm cheap...and don't have the money, anyway...I decided to try my hand at creating my own backdrops.

I bought a full size tan sheet (poly/cotton blend) and a large bottle of dark brown Rit dye.  

I folded my sheet in half and half again.

I held the sheet by the corner (so the sheet looked like a ghost).  

I then tied off every 4 inches with a shoe string (I opted not to use rubberbands, because I didn't want too much distinction between the two colors).

I filled a small cooler 3/4 full of cold water and 1 cup of sal, then added the dye.  I put in the sheet and soaked for 20-30 minutes.

I dumped the water (in the yard!) and rinsed the sheet with a water hose for about 10 minutes.  

Without untie-ing the sheet, I left it to dry outside for about an hour.  

I then wrapped the sheet in an old towel and dried in the dryer for two cycles.

Here are the results:
Brown Backdrop

If you'd like to have a photo (or photos) deleted from your "My Photos" page, please contact one of the following Editors:

austinspace (John)
codepoit (Chris)
kwsNI (Aaron)
kikker (Shmuli)

Private Message is the best way to make this type of request. PM links for each of us can be found on the Contact page (link at the top of every Photographica page). You are more than welcome to send a PM to any other Editor, but the 4 of us listed above are around a lot more often than the others.

Lots of folks seem to be having trouble with the Gallery feature, so as I service to all, I thought I'd create this brief tutorial.  I hope it helps.

Creating a Gallery is very easy, and incorporating a Gallery into a Story is no more difficult than adding photos... except that you have to manually type the code.

Here are the steps.

1. Upload photos as you would for any other purpose.

2. Click "Create New Gallery", and you'll be transported to a screen that looks LIKE THIS

3. Give your Gallery a Title and a Keyword
   REMEMBER THIS KEYWORD... IT WILL NOT SHOW ANYWHERE LATER

4. Change the colors of the background and text in the boxes shown
   (default is white text on black background)

5. In the left column, select the keyword of each photo you want to include in the Gallery.

   NOTE:  Photos can be no more than 750px wide, or 560 high, or they won't show up in the pulldown  
   (This is about as large as you'd want to go for most images on this site anyway)

   note that the keyword pulldown may appear "lower" on the screen than the corresponding number and description fields..  don't worry about this.

6. In the right-hand column, enter a brief description, which will appear below the photo.

7. Continue as above to add up to 20 photos to the gallery

8. <Click "Submit">, and you've created the gallery.
   

Of course until you plug your gallery into a story, it won't be visible anywhere.  

--------------------------------------

Now, create a new story:

1. Click "Post New Story"

2. write your story text

3. Insert your gallery as you would for a popup, but change the tag "[popup] to [Gallery], and using the Gallery's keyword you memorized in step 3 above.

   So,  for example, this demo gallery uses the syntax:
   
   [gallery keyword="GalleryDemo"] demo gallery [/gallery]
   
   (where brackets [  and ] are really < and > symbols, respectively)

4. preview your story by clicking "preview", and when ready,

5. click "Submit"... and your story is posted to the site.
   

I hope this helps.... let's see some amazing galleries.