On 11-09-05 4:09 AM, Larry Colen wrote:
A couple weeks ago, someone commented that most of my portraits have black
backgrounds. I do that because not lighting a black background is the easiest
way to get rid of clutter that can ruin a shot. I've also realized that when
I'm photographing musicians, I tend to compose in tight, often cropping out
portions of their head, in my pursuit of getting rid of anything that might be
clutter in the background.
I also find that I tend to shoot from further away, with a longer lens, to
narrow the angle of view, and have fewer things cluttering up the background.
Even if that means that there is a smaller ratio of distance to the subject to
distance to the background, which conflicts with the shallower depth of field
of a long lens, to use DoF to blur out the background.
There are all sorts of reasons why just making the background, and the clutter
in it, go away, is a really great cheat
The word you want there is "technique". :)
for making good photographs. It's often a lot more effort to make a
background work, than to get rid of it. So, it seems to me, that one thing that
I need to work on is to learn how to use the backgrounds, rather than just
making them go away. Or, at least, learn some new ways of making the
background go away.
What sorts of techniques do you use to make use of backgrounds in your photos?
What do you look for in a background that'll improve the shot, or ruin it?
Things I do:
* if you can, choose your background (obvious).
o looking for: uniformity. Eg: simple repeating pattern, texture;
low contrast. Nothing in it brighter than foreground; Elements
that are easy to clone out later, if necessary.
o pick a different room or area; move or rearrange the furniture.
o maybe the background adds to "the story". Eg: pub fixtures when
shooting a bar band.
o temporarily hang a rug on the wall.
o get an assistant to hold a reflector up behind the subject if
you're doing a headshot. I find a 42" 5-in-1 will work with two
people close together. Some PS cloning later to get the corners
filled-in if the coverage wasn't *quite* all there.
* if you can't choose your background, choose your point-of-view to
get a better background.
o perhaps stand off to the side rather than front and center.
o get lower or higher to shift the background's horizon, hopefully
out of the shot altogether.
o raise the camera over your head on a monopod. A "Hail Mary" shot.
* use your foreground to hide parts of the background. Eg: arrange for
your subject to be in front of distracting elements, like stuff on
the wall.
* choose a low-contrast background. A higher contrast subject stands
out well in front of a low-contrast background.
* if you can, light the background evenly so as to reduce its
contrast. Eg: add a little fill light to the background (but don't
let it get brighter than the subject).
* if you're using a black backdrop, light it with a coloured gel.
Create a pleasing oval or circle of blue light behind a portrait
subject.
* blow out the background. If you make the background more than 2
stops brighter than the subject it goes white. Eg: shoot in front of
a window; you'll have to front-light your subject, and spot-meter
the background and subject to maintain the 2-3 stops ratio.
* DoF your background into oblivion. This is where the argument that
"we don't need large aperture lenses any more because ISO goes so
high" becomes nonsense.
* Photoshop the background: blur it; darken it; lighten it; make it
very low contrast. PS CS5 makes it especially easy to extract
subjects so you can modify the background. It's also easy to use the
Lightroom adjustment brush to "blow out" background areas by raising
the exposure 3 stops.
-bmw
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