Lessons

Lesson Info

Better Backgrounds

One of the most important reasons that I'm choosing a particular point of view, is for, a better background. Anybody is gonna find an interesting subject and photograph it. But it takes somebody who kind of is trained photographically, to think about things, to realize, that's not a good background, we need to go over here and it's gonna be a much better background and it won't be as confusing and it'll make for a better photograph. So in Cuba, nice little lake here, I think it's kinda beautiful with the palm trees back there, but there's these big power lines. And, you know, I like Photoshop and all, but I'm not gonna go in and Photoshop out these power lines and everything. For another reason, I just don't wanna spend the time doing that. Alright. And so for me I can get a similar but slightly different shot, by getting down just a little bit lower. And those power lines they're still there, if you look hard for them, but they are really thrown far into the background in this case. M...

inimized as much as I can, because there's other subjects that you're looking at. And all this required was the effort, to do, to go from here, just down to here. Alright, having that tripod get down a little bit lower. And I know for some people, getting all the way down here requires a lot of work to get back up. But I think it's worth it for so many photos. I could've photographed this from 90 degrees around the side, and I would of ended up with a crowded market place. Different shot, maybe a good shot on it's on, but I wanted a nice clean background, just a simple rock wall. Choosing the shot here, that had a nice clean background, that subject really stands out from that background. This is the ocean in the background here, and it's just one of those things that I know is gonna make a good background, if I can find a subject to put in front of that. And then get down here so that you can see between the legs and get some real nice separation there. A river, and using a slower shutter speed to add additional blur to that background makes that subject stand out. One of the stranger buildings in Seattle. Makes for a perfect background, of this tree. Using that shallow depth of field of a fast aperture 50mm 1.4 lens. Able to blow that completely out of focus, but we have some nice color and a nice out of focus area. Another case of getting down really low, for a perfectly clean background. Okay, I had to give myself a little pat on the back on this one. (pats back) This was one of those, aww that was so creative of mine for the moment. I was trying to shoot this car, and there was just a lot of clutter in the background, and I'm like I can't, how do I get rid of all this clutter? And I notice these buses driving down the street, and I go well, if I time the shot, right as the bus is passing, with the slow shutter speed, I'll end up with just a nice smooth blur in the background. And so, it's a shot that's only available once every couple minutes, but if you wait patient, and you use the tripod, and the right shutter speed, you get yourself a nice clean background. And now you don't notice all the awkward stuff going on in the background. Once again, in Cuba. It wasn't that I found the subject first, it was I found the background first. Then I kinda waited for somebody to come in front of this background. The cross country team that I often photograph, races at a course not far from my house. And this is what the photos from the finish of the race will look like as they come in. And so, you know I'll end up with a lot of photos like this using about a 300mm lens. And they show the subjects quite nicely, you see a little bit of people in the background, and you know generally the kids like these types of shots. And I noticed that if I shot in a certain position, I started getting this really nice color in the background. And I really liked that, it kinda added another, another tiny little element of good to the photograph. And so if you go back to the setup, here. I would start on the left as they came around the edge of that track, and worked their way towards the finish line, and as they got right in front of this one tree, that would turn color, at that time of year, when they had the championship race. There was a kind of magic spot that the runner had to be in, that I needed to be in as well, and I could get these shots that had this really nice background. This is only available from one exact position with a particular lens. And so I would shoot as runners would come through that particular spot, and it was kind of one of those little secret, magic hidden spots where things lined up perfectly. Another concept that works out quite well, is that there is a lights advance, and darks retreat. Light subjects just appear to be more toward the foreground, and dark subjects just seem to be more in the background. And so thinking about a dark background, because that can really help out a photograph. That's kinda the default thing I'm looking for, if I know that I have a good subject, probably the simplest thing I can do to make that subjects stand out, is finding a dark background to put behind em. Here in Seattle at the arboretum. I believe this is a Japanese maple tree, and there's some trees in the background. Then one of the concepts we'll talk about more in the photographic vision section, is about how the human eye works. One of the little things in the way it works, is that it often looks for the brightest subject. The brightest item in there. And while this little gap is not an very important subject, your eye goes to it, and it kinda has a hard time not going to that bright area. And so by moving the camera about four feet. I can completely eliminate it, but my subject is the same. And so I'm just adjusting my position to change the background. And now this picture is not betrayed, by that distracting background. Eliminating the distractions, that the photograph might have. This is a dingo in Australia. And, I've always wanted to photograph a dingo, after all my name is Greengo. (audience laughing) Gotta have a dingo photo. But I really like the photo of it standing in front of a dark trunked tree. And for me the difference is, if you can see the ears, they have a little bit of back lighting on them. And you can see this triangular shape, that just is one extra element that pops out. And so having these little mini elements that pop in your photograph, can help out. And so if I'm photographing wildlife, I'm constantly moving left and right. Not only do I wanna get reasonably close to the animal, so I can fill the frame, but left and right, I wanna figure out what the right angle is for that particular animal. And I'm not too much concerned as to what the right position is with the angle, with the animal, because they'll probably look at me at some point. And so almost any angles' gonna work, but I'm looking for a good background. And so doing portraits, if nothing else, find a nice dark background. It just simplifies the whole scene. And so a great place to do this, is in doorways, because it tends to be very dark inside. If you're kinda like on the front door of a building, and you're outside, there's typically lots of light outside, and it's gonna be dark inside. And so doorways are kind of a magical spot. Remember how I mentioned those magic Xs? Alright, that little treasure hunt. Right in front of a doorway, look at how much darker it is inside vs outside. And so hanging clothes in the window, it's darker inside, a nice dark background. When the weather gets stormy, woops, weather not stormy, did I? There we go, I don't know why I went passed that one. So when storms are coming in or they're just leaving, that is a potentially great time to go out. Because, that's, it's kind of exciting. You know when a storm comes into town, or it's just leaving, it's, I mean whether you're scared or not, there's a moment of excitement, of something's gonna happen here. And part of that is just the different look, it looks different and ominous. And having that dark background is a completely different background that you get to have in those times. Positioning myself so there is a dark background, behind this subject, makes him stand out just a little bit more. Once again, these doorways. Just very effective places to have nice even lighting on the outside. And so we talked about this in the lighting section. Remember I had the tobacco farmer outside, and I had the dirt reflecting light back. I didn't have dirt reflecting light, dirt was reflecting light back, I took advantage of it. And that's the same thing that's going on here, light outside, light bouncing inside, beautiful light. Great place to position a subject. Yin and Yang, if one's good the other might be good as well. And so if a dark background could be good, well maybe a light background could be good as well. It's not that a light background is bad, it's just a different type of good. So later today, we're gonna have a quiz. And this is kind of a preview of what that type of quiz is. And we're gonna be testing the way you see with your own eyes, how good a judge are you of what you see right now. So we're gonna do a little audience participation poll in this class, and here's the deal. A number of these colors are exactly the same color, and a number of these colors are different, and I want you to try to figure out which ones are the same, and which ones are different. So we'll start with the purple ones. So let's have you raise your hand if you think the purple are identical in color. Is anyone gonna raise their hand? We have three hands going up. Let's take a look on the purple, and I'm sorry but you are incorrect. You can stay in the game though, you can continue to play along. (audience laughs) So the yellow, who thinks the yellow, raise your hand if you think the yellow is exactly the same on the left and the right. One, two, three, four, four hands there. And, sorry you folks are wrong. Okay, now the cyan color, who thinks the cyan is the same. Raise your hands. Let's see those hands. I have less people trusting me folks. (audience laughs) So I only have one hand going up. And, they are incorrect as well. Alright, now let me review the rules of this game, a number of them are the same, a number of them are different, and zero is a number. Okay. So, is the gray the same, raise your hand if you think the gray is the same. We have a number of hands going up, and the gray is the same, so nice job to you. But the color of the background, the point of this, is that the color of the background affects the way that we see what is in front of that background. It affects the color, the saturation of it, and we will see things differently because of that background. And so having a white background is gonna look a little different than if we had a black background. Obviously, if we go back into that exposure section, that affects the way we change our exposures and so forth. And in some ways, a white background can be distracting, but in other ways, this is the way that painters work. Remember he has a white piece of paper, and they only add the elements that they want. This is a little more difficult to work with, in photography for obvious reasons. But having that white clean background, isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. It can really work out well in many situations. Just some examples of very clean white backgrounds. Subjects becoming silhouettes with light colored backgrounds. We talked about how to find this time of day, back in the lighting section. You remember, the nautical lighting, the astronomical, twilight, and so forth. And so finding subjects that have good shapes, and working with them at sunrise and sunset, great way to frame up your subject. Great place, this is Bandon Beach down in Oregon, on the Oregon coast. Trying to remember the name of this little arch, it'll come to me in a moment. But this arch is down in California just by Mt. Whitney. And, oh why is, somebodies gonna call in, somehow I lost the name of this web for a moment, but we we're shooting sunset here, and I was like, you know what let's stick around til twilight and nighttime, and see if there's some other shots. I tried a bunch of lighting shots that just didn't work out, but the silhouette shot worked out well. Nope, lost the name of it. Up at Mt. Rainier, just kinda walking along the trail, put the camera away, thought everything was over, and then I just kinda saw this alignment, of some trees in the foreground vs a hillside in the background, with a little bit of the crescent moon setting. And so keeping an eye on subjects that have distinctive shapes. Being out there at the right time of day, not heading in too quickly, kinda squeeze as much as you can out of that light. One of my favorite silhouettes comes down from the Bellagio, not this photo here, but I was down at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and they do this big water show out in front. I'm sure many of you have seen it. And I went down and put my camera kinda in the front center row of shooting photos, and I shot photos for a couple of their shows, which is about a half hour or hour or so, and I just didn't feel, you know that good feeling when you get that good shot, I didn't have that feeling. And so it's like, well I gotta move around. And so what I did was I went around to the backside, cause you know, yin yang, you gotta try one, you gotta do the exact opposite. Well, this one didn't work either, so I went back around to the front side, shot some more photos, and, still just didn't quite get it. And this is one of those areas back what we talked about at the beginning of the section, I needed time. So I stopped shooting, I put the camera in the camera bag, and I stopped shooting, and I just sat there. Okay, what's going on? I'm enjoying this personally but I am not getting a good photograph. Why am I not doing this? What am I not seeing? And then I suddenly realized, oh there's the photograph. And if anyone has seen the movie, one of my favorite movies, It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, world. Where they're looking for the giant W, there's a giant W, and you gotta find the giant W. And there running around the park, and all of a sudden, (humming praises) they see the giant W, and that's the way it felt to me, when I saw this. And I just had to stand back a little bit, I was trying to eliminate the people from the picture, cause people are just clutter, and you don't want the people in the photographs, and I was completely wrong. And so, standing back, taking a moment, just reassess, let your brain rest for a moment, so that you can come back and just think clearly about things