When you’re photographing your subject always be aware what is in the background.
Backgrounds can kill your image by being very distracting, remember that your primary subject should grab your eyeball first.
You can either choose to use it to your advantage, or to shoot it so that it is less distracting
At a recent on location shoot at a suburban home in QLD I was faced with a few critical situations that I had to deal with.
It was a nondescript house and street.The lighting was still quite harsh. My client wanted shots of her daughter in the st doing a few dance poses, I had a look around the street and decided on a few different options
Option 1: Here I’ve found a nice plain wall that is part of a garden front fence, this instantly gets rid of a distracting background.
Option 2: Here I’ve used the same front french however this time I’ve pulled back a bit and used the fence to frame my subject
Option 3: In this shot I’ve liked the the surface of the road and I’ve used that as a compositional tool, I would have like to have waited for the sun to set to help me with the background unfortunately time didn’t permit that. So in this instance I’ve used depth of field to blur out the back ground making it less distracting
So remember when shooting portraits have a look at the background and workout how you are going to use it to your advantage.
Happy Shooting 🙂
Daryl Gordon Photography
“telling your family story”