I've been enjoying the hobby of model horse photo showing since March of 1973 (gosh, 37 years!! Did they have cameras back then??), and one of the big "things" of photo showing is...the background.
Back in the early days I made due with scenic poster purchased at a local book store. After a while, I turned to painting various arenas on illustration board and using them. Then people came out with custom poster-sized backdrops of horsey locations (arenas, stables, pastures). Then around 2000 people prefered plain fabric backdrops, with more focus on the horse than its setting. Nowadays I think the trend is heading back towards realistic settings, especially for performance setups where the object is to recreate a horse show class in miniature!
This blog entry details how to create a simple, economical, and perfectly proper indoor arena setting. Just do a Google image search for "indoor horse arenas" for ideas and reference pictures. The simpler, the better, because you don't want to distract from the subject of your photo; the model horse!
Here's the inspiration for this backdrop.
I started out with a large sheet of corrugated cardboard, but you can also use any rigid board such as plywood, particle board, foamcore, or even matte board. I wouldn't recommend lighter cardboard like poster board, because it'll bend and warp.
Using a ruler, I marked out where I wanted to draw the "support beams" and horizontal "boards", and where the ridges for the "siding" would be. I masked off the areas to be painted with painter's tape, and used black and white acrylic paints, painted the "beams". You could use poster paints as well.
I used a soft black drawing pencil to do the small vertical lines.
Then I cut a piece of foam core board the width of my cardboard, and about 8" tall for the lower piece and hot-glued it along the bottom.
At intervals along the foam board, I drew vertical lines with pencil to simulate where the panels would be "joined" in this arena. Along the bottom I used Elmer's glue to smear it randomly, and sprinkled/smeared garden dirt on the glue to give it that dirty arena look. A finger dipped in water and then the dirt also worked to add various smears and dirty patches.
Once this dried, just prop it up behind your photo setup, and there you go!
Just shove the footing material up against the base of the background so it hides the gap between the background and the footing, and you're ready to go!
