Aye, I do indeed remember! What you may not know is that I was one of the crew of the Black Pearl and was already dead!! So now I've escaped from the grave and am hunting for my treasure. The bad news is the brain damage from being buried "undead" has made me more psychotic than before. The good news (for you) is, you can usually tell if I'm within a mile because of the smel...
lighting is not the easiest thing to get right, I know cause I suck at it. But I can tell you that if your models weren't so close to the back drop and/or you had a fill flash to just light the back drop, those cast shadows would go away.
So if your puter does die, what are your plans?