The first thing I need are hooks for holding a roll of seamless, or whatever it is I will hang from the ceiling. The photo above shows an empty roll core from a 9 foot roll of seamless paper. These cores are very handy for multiple uses. I rarely throw anything away. The idea is to make a hook that will slip into both ends. After poking around Lowe’s, I decided to make the hook from hardware angle brackets.

Each of these brackets are six inches on the side and made of zinc coated steel. I want the lift point to be midway along the horizontal arm. This way the hook is self balancing and will not try to torque from vertical lifting. To make this requires two brackets pieced together in a C configuration.

These are assembled using two 1/4-20 machine bolts with a washer on each side. I chose to use 3/4 long bolts. Lowe’s and Home Depot sell a package of bolts with nuts. I picked up a package that has 50 sets. Only costs a few dollars. You can also get for less than a dollar a package of 4 or 6 sets in those little plastic bags. I used a washer on both sides, the head and nut side.

I want the roll to self level and self align to pulling on the paper. To do this, I am using pulleys on each hook instead of attaching the rope directly to the hook. These cost about $5 each. The hanging hook swivels to allow the pulley to self align as the rope passes through.

I attached a pulley to the center hole of each C bracket.

The bracket inserts into the end of the tube.

A rope will traverse between the two pulleys, up to the ceiling. By having the ceiling pulleys mounted a little closer together than the width of the tube, the brackets will have a force pushing them into the tube keeping them from falling out. Additionally, the angle configuration, combined with the angular pull causes the edge of the bracket to press against the side wall of the tube. This will help prevent a runaway roll. A clamp should still be used to keep the roll from unraveling when hanging. Every photographer has experienced the runaway roll. This little trick should help prevent that from happening. Especially when some extra length needs to be pulled from the roll after hanging.

NEXT: Mounting the ceiling pulleys.

My solution is to rig up a mechanism in the ceiling with some pulleys and rope to raise and lower a roll of paper, curtains, fabric, muslin, or whatever I want to use as a backdrop. The idea is that mid-shoot I simply lower the bar down, swap out to the next backdrop, then raise it back up. No stands, no climbing ladders, simple. Sometimes my genius is amazing.

This is the first of multiple entries in my blog following the progress of this project. Below is a photo of my cove. The mechanism will be between the two rafters top-center.