Changing content background color on a static page

Hello! I'm using a static page for my homepage, and just have a featured photo. That's all I want, no other content. But even though I have no text in the page body, I still see a white rectangle just under the photo, where the content would be. How can I get rid of this? I tried making the content background black, from the info on this page http://catchthemes.com/support-forum/topic/change-content-background-colour-specific-page/ In the Custom CSS section I put: .page-id-18 #main { background-color: #000000; } But it seems to have no effect. The site is http://paulmcfarland.com/wp/ if you want to have a look. I also don't want the footer to be that big -- I want to add the Contact Paul with an email link in the bottom footer, but somehow it appears above the footer. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you Kathy