Plain Backgrounds, like a painter's drop cloth, old bed sheet, or moving pad placed behind what is up for sale, etc. are the best way to keep people from seeing more than they should in a photo. It's usually relatively easy to place or hang something like one of these behind and/or below what you really want to be seen in the photo. Light position and brightness allow you to move and minimize the shadows. Some shadows are good to produce an image that appears to have depth and not flat like a printed poster, but keep them where they add interest and not hide important details that might make or break a sale.
You would not believe what is in my photos that I hide from view via fabric backgrounds, or just black darkness via carefully controlled lighting levels and camera adjustments. I almost always leave the ceiling light on in my photo studio while doing photo shoots, and it isn't seen in the photos because the studio flash lighting is controlled to only illuminate what I want seen in the photo and it is at a significantly brighter level than this ceiling light, so easy to separate by brightness level.
In the attached photo I restricted the diameter of the light beam using a honeycomb type grid to only allow light coming straight out of the light source. Any light coming out at an angle is blocked by this honeycomb. So with the light source located about 5' from the roses, only the flowers are illuminated brightly, with a small bit of light spill that illuminates the vase and table top just enough to be seen, but the (black) photo gear behind the table does not show because it is mostly black and not reflective, and it is far enough away from the flowers that the light level at that distance (about 10' from the light source) does not reflect the light at a sufficient level for the camera to see it. In this way, darkness and distance can be your background that hides what you don't want to be seen in the photo.
A cell phone is not designed to make use of darkness as a background, because all of it's camera settings are automatic and designed to make you nice brightly lit photos in almost any lighting situation. If there is any light at all, it will adjust to the best of it's ability to make the best use of it. Use a painters drop cloth, a moving pad, old bed sheet or other to hide what you don't want seen, if your camera is a cell phone or some other point-and-shoot type camera with no adjustments. Adjust whatever lights you have to minimize or eliminate most of the shadows, so the prospective buyer can really see what you are selling, and use something to cover anything else that is not up for sale, so it doesn't show in the photos that you will post.
Charley
