Looking through some old photos, I came across this one, and noticed how similar it was to the picture I posted yesterday.
This shot was taken from a motel parking lot. I thought the spiky leaves formed an interesting contrast to the geometric and colorful background of the building. (B is for Background! C is for Color! and D is for Diagonal!) An an abstract shot like this, less is more.
Many photographers, in their quest for technical perfection, perfect focus, optimal resolution, etc. overlook one goal of photography: expression.
Yesterday, I took this picture of a small flower. It was handheld, and the lighting was poor. It is obviously not sharp, and I blurred it even more in Photoshop. But it expresses what I wanted to convey: color and beauty. The background colors are colored tiles in a courtyard where I took the picture (B is for Background! and C is for Color!)
Cutting off the subject's head always makes for a more abstract picture! Here I wanted to emphasize motion and color. Showing the rider anonymously makes it less about the individual and more about the concept. The overall blur helps the abstract quality as well– there's nothing wrong with blur if it's for a reason.
B is for Background! (I will keep coming back to this!) I carefully positioned myself to get the colored panels in the background.
The rider (with the wonderful red arm-warmers!) interrupting the geometric shapes makes for an interesting composition. (C is for Composition, C is for Color, D is for Diagonals, and R is for Red will be upcoming posts).
One more picture illustrating how I often find the background first, then make the picture.
Walking through the streets of Tecate, Baja California, I came across a wall with the Mexican colors painted on it. I couldn't resist a background like that, so I asked one of my friends I was with to pose in front of it. She obliged. I like the result:
Abstract does not have to mean a picture of peeling paint or a canvas full of incomprehensible splotches. It is useful to look for geometric shapes, bold colors, curves, and other aspects of your subject which help define it, without showing the entire subject. It's easy to get carried away, though, and take boring shots that only you appreciate!
This picture was taken in the Ensenada Harbor, on a Jim Cline photo tour. I hope I'm not alone in liking it!
Another illustration about background. I belabor this point because I think it is so important.
Here's a picture of a bottle of wine in a Baja California winery.
This shot has plenty of problems. The subject is too small, it's too centered in the frame, and the background, while clean, is, in a word, boring.
I took another bottle of wine and placed it on a table, and carefully positioned the camera (on a tripod!) so that the bottle is more prominent, and the background includes the receding line of wine barrels. This gives the appropriate context: we are in a winery! But because I was close to the subject and used a fairly small aperture (5.6), the background is pleasingly out of focus, so does not compete with the subject. (a digicam, with its very small sensor size, gives a much larger depth-of-field so would have a difficult time achieving this effect without considerable Photoshop).
This is an example of taking control of the scene, and knowing the effect you want to achieve. It only took a few minutes, but compared to the first attempt, tells the story more effectively.
Travel shots like these are easier if you are with other like-minded photographers with an itinerary carefully planned around photography. This was taken on a Jim Cline Latin American Photo Tour, which I highly recommend.
You may notice I didn't start with A in my posts, even though this is PhotoABCs. That's because I really like to emphasize the importance of background.
I like to think of background as being clean, contextual, or cluttered. Of course, clean is usually good, as I showed in yesterday's post. What is often more difficult, is giving the subject a contextual background, in other words, showing it in its environment, without being cluttered, or distracting. Remember, most often, a simple photograph is more direct and communicates better than a busy one, with too many distractions.
Here is a sequence of photos I took at Grand Canyon Caverns in Arizona, along Route 66. The first photo shows the dinosaur in its location, in front of the caverns entrance.
To me, the building and surroundings are too distracting. Often I will place signs or other objects against the sky for a cleaner background:
That's better. The sky is cleaner, but of course, it gives no context for the picture. Looking around, I found what I needed:
The blowing US and Route 66 flags are just enough to give a context for the dinosaur. Having the dinosaur on one edge, and the flags on the other, gives visual interest. (E is for Edges will be a later topic).
Do a background check! That is good advice for an employer, it is good advice for a photographer. A distracting background hurts more photographs than any other mistake.
When I photograph, I pay equal attention to the background as I do to my subject matter and lighting. Think about a photographer's studio. The studio environment consists of what? Controlled lighting, and a controlled background!
Here are three photographs I took of Daniela Hantuchova, at the Acura Classic tennis tournament in La Costa, California. The first two suffer from various problems, chiefly distracting elements in the background (the ballboy, the bright sky, etc.). Luckily tennis players change sides every two games, so when she served, I positioned myself so that the blue backdrop formed a clean background. The folds even look like a studio backdrop! The soft, overcast, afternoon lighting was pleasing as well.
I will return to the subject of background with multiple examples in future posts.
