Subject and Background

While it may be obvious that the background makes a difference in a photo, this is an area that truly separates a lot of pros from amateurs. The professional sees the entire photo and arranges the subject to have a good relationship to the background. Sometimes, all you have to do is take a step to the left or right.

For this sequence I circled Nicole taking her portrait against a variety of backgrounds at a point of land on a lake at a state park. It was generally overcast for this sequence: I could not have done this sequence on a sunny day because the changing quality of light as I walked around Nicole would have been much more noticeable than the background changing.

Bottom Line: See the whole photo and arrange your subject to work well with the background.

(roughly) 105mm, 5.6, 1/250, ISO 400

Left

Right

Here Nicole is against a dark shadowed forest, so her hair tends to blend into the background, which is not ideal.

I moved her in front of a large tree so the background is lighter bark. Also, the tree is at the edge of the woods, so the overcast light is more directional - coming more strongly from the right — away from the woods.

Here she posed against the rich red pine needles of the forest floor.

We place ourselves so that she was in a fairly shaded spot, but behind her was a well lit stand of trees. With the light now mostly coming from behind her she gets that nice highlight on the light side and enough light still on the darker side.

This is playing with the overcast light by moving partly under the trees to shape the light.

Same as the shot to the left, but we moved so that the lake is the background.

For this shot we found a place where the lake was showing much brighter and the dominant light came from the left and behind her.

In soft cloudy light you can play these games — moving around under or near trees or buildings, but on a sunny day the contrast will usually be too strong.

This is probably amateur error number one or two: not noticing that something in the background is sticking out of the person's head. It's a lot better to learn to see these things than to try to fix them in the computer later.

But to tell the truth, I still find myself removing distracting background objects later that I either didn't see or could not avoid.

Here the background has become "visually noisy" and makes it harder to see Nicole.