I always look for ways to use complimentary contrasting colors or tonal contrast when choosing a background. Here the morning lighting and alpenglow creates a great background for the ridges with new snow. A carefully chosen point of view allowed me to use color separation to make the gold trees stand out against a darker background of the distant mountains.
Almost every nature subject we photograph has a background that relates to it. One of the most critical creative skills to develop as a photographer is making, choosing or designing a background that works with and adds to the image. Unfortunately, many images depict backgrounds that distract and take attention away from the main subject. This is why in every photo situation we encounter, no matter how excited we are to see and capture our main subject, we should conduct a background check first.
Sometimes we get so excited about seeing a subject we love (a bear, a great aurora display, etc.) that our brains zoom in on that subject and completely tune out distracting elements and/or harsh light in both the background and foreground that take emphasis away from our main subject. A photographer with a highly refined eye from years of practicing their craft never loses sight of the subject/background relationship. No matter how great your subject, the background (and lighting) HAS TO WORK. This is one of the things that separates people with cameras from skilled photographers with a highly refined vision.
It’s easy to see why people got excited about this adorable grizzly cub. The background is horrible with hard, busy lines and blown out tones and just takes so much away from the image. The solution is changing points of view since you can’t art direct a bear to get a better background. The background is busy and blown out and no post production tool can make it better. You gotta know when to not polish a turd.
On this shot of a sow and cub in nice morning light, the background still has blown out bleached logs that would take a lot of work to remove in post and have it look natural. Recognizing this, I know the solution is changing my POV perhaps going lower and using the body mass of the sow to block the distracting background. This isn’t always easy but you have to try and try I did.
I finally got the best POV possible and even then I had to use the generative remove tools in several places to make my background clean without distracting from the bears.
THE THINGS THAT AFFECT BACKGROUNDS THE MOST ARE:
- Light
- Atmospheric conditions (clouds, precipitation, dust, smoke, etc.)
- Your point of view (POV) and, yes, even
- Lens choice can greatly impact background rendering.
Changing your point of view is an often overlooked and a simple technique to strengthening your subject/background relationship. When I saw this bear in a beautiful meadow with glowing green and yellow colors with dark spruce trees, I knew a low point of view and shallow depth of field would really help make this bear stand out. I had to get down in wet grass to make this happen but it was worth the dirt and mud I got on my clothes.
Michael’s background principles are:
Clean, smooth and not busy or cluttered with large blown out or blocked up areas and busy patterns with hard, irregular lines. Eliminate bright, blown out spots, and large blocky voids of black.
Colorful in a way that complements the subject. Think of a beautiful mountain range after a fresh snow blankets the land, but the clouds behind the ridge are white so you have white on white which doesn’t make for good separation. You need dark or colorful clouds or blue sky to offer crisp backgrounds.
Relatable. Adds context, authenticity, and relates to the image creating a sense of place. Well thought out sense of place really helps anchor an image. A field of wildflowers looks better if you can show the environment that they exist in. Same with many wildlife images – showing an animal in context to where it lives can be just as impactful as a close up portrait.
Maximizes Separation. Separation is another critical creative skill that makes your main subject(s) stand out and pop from their immediate surroundings. Because our world and vision are three dimensional, you will see more separation between your subject and background in real life than you will in a two dimensional photo. Depth and separation in real life gets lost in images without using design techniques to restore separation and depth is critical.
Denali National Park in fall colors #1. Tundra colors can be really nice and saturated when photographed in flat light. The key to maximizing impact is carefully choosing your background. In this shot a third of the image area is of nothing but featureless white sky. Bald, white sky is about the worst choice you can make for a landscape background. it just takes away from the beautiful warm colors and the clouds drown out the nice yellows on the mountainside behind the trees. The separation of the spruce trees isn’t as good as it could be and the little tree on the right doesn’t separate out well from the trees behind it. I didn’t give up and kept observing the ever changing fog and stratus clouds for better backgrounds.
Denali National Park in fall colors #2. A narrow strip of stratus developed well below ridge level, so I moved my POV so that the stratus cloud helped with separation of the spruce trees with contrasting tonality (dark against white). This also helped with what I wanted in the first place which was to also emphasize the colors on the mountain side and the cloud bank helped with that as well.
FOUR COMMON TECHNIQUES TO HELP ACHIEVE SEPARATION
1) Selective Light: lit subject and shadowed background is usually a winning formula and a tried and true portrait formula.
2) Selective Focus: sharp subject, blurry background: this is forced with long lenses with big maximum apertures (600mm f/4) and this is why many wildlife and sports shooters use long, fast expensive telephoto lenses because in the environments they shoot in, selective focus is often the only way to get an impactful image. If you have a great subject with a busy background, this is my go-to method; grab the tele, shoot at maximum focal length and maximum aperture to render the least distracting background.
3) Contrast Separation: this has to do with tones where your subject is a different tone than its immediate surrounding creating a contrast separation.
4) Complimentary, Contrasting Color Separation: I use this a lot with images of people outdoors. If we are in a warm colored environment like a sandstone slot canyon, I will have my subject wear a complimentary, contrasting color like a purple or turquoise to create separation. All kinds of good color combinations exist in nature and I let that be my guide. This also works for many wildlife and landscape scenarios.
Peru #1. This view from Paso de Santa Rosa in the Peruvian Andes was one of the most striking mountain scenes ever. Though I like the feel of the small hikers on the enormous scree field and I carefully positioned them for maximum separation, I was also aware that there was little I could do to save the white peaks against white clouds. This creates poor background separation of the mountains. I was still on the hunt to make this scene work with the light I had. On location I’m not always looking for “home runs” I push beyond my first idea (this one) and ask what steps can I take to make this scene the best it can be given the conditions I have?
Peru #2. A few minutes later we got better though not ideal separation between mountains and clouds. In this enormous bowl of warm colored rock, I had Lauri wear her rain jacket and gaiters as those colors would really help separate her from her immediate background surroundings. Also deliberate on my part was foreground/background color echoing in which colors in the foreground are the same as some colors in the background. That’s hard to do with wildlife but with lifestyle, travel and adventure shooting this is a tool you should keep in your box. As much as I love small person in big landscape images, making my hiker bigger than the previous image added more impact.
Bosque cranes scene #1. A common mistake with silhouettes against colorful water and sky is large geometric blocks of black void and poor separation between birds. On location, your eye will see separation amongst the birds and detail in the shadow but you have to recognize how your camera sees the scene and adjust backgrounds accordingly to get good separation and impact.
Bosque cranes scene #2. Lens choice can affect how backgrounds are rendered and how separation is achieved. I gave up on the birds and trying to show a group in silhouette. In order to showcase the beautiful sunset sky I shifted to a wide angle lens knowing that would minimize the area of black void and draw more attention to the colors of the sky and reflection on the water.
Sky Images. Sometimes the sky, which is normally the background IS the subject. Successful sky images such as colorful and dramatic clouds, aurora or other night sky displays need interesting and supportive terrestrial foregrounds. Anyone can point a camera at the sky and capture a colorful sunrise, sunset or night display but it takes skill and thought to find a foreground that is graphic, interesting, colorful and that gives that all important sense-of-place to a sky image.
White Sands #1. The key to good “sky as the subject” images is having a visually pleasing and compelling foreground. This image fails miserably. The foreground is busy with no real lines or center of interest and the sky is bright, blown out with little interest with color, shape and texture of the clouds. The only thing done right is horizon placement. If your image is about the sky, then it should occupy the majority of the image. Placing the horizon line in the middle of the image makes it less compelling.
White Sands #2. If I’m confident I will get a warm colorful sky I will spend time finding a foreground that works. I carefully chose a dune where the lines all radiated toward the sky. I tried shooting this same scene without any vegetation and in the editing phase I concluded that the one with the yucca, seen here, was more interesting.
MICHAEL’S SUBJECT/BACKGROUND WINNING FORMULAS:
Warm subject/cold background – This is a tried and true formula from the portrait world. Warm human skin, well-lit against a cool colored background makes the person pop. You can translate that formula to many nature subjects.
Cranes take off #1. One can never get enough of birds in action. The key to a good image is working the subject/background relationships because they don’t all work. You connect the things that work: good subject, good background, good light and often you just wait for those things to line up. What I really wanted here was warmly lit birds in a blue sky.
When photographing cranes in flight I look for the classic portrait formula of warmly lit or toned subject against a cool background.
Silhouettes – Sometimes just showing the shape of a subject can work but it only works if the background is warm toned and colorful. Silhouettes of people and wildlife always look better in sunset or sunrise skies than they would in blue mid-day skies.
Snow Geese #1. The big appeal at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico is being among thousands of birds in a concentrated area. My goal on this morning was to show a small group of snow geese taking off in backlight with light coming through their wings. I like the grouping and position of the birds here but the background is not good. It has blown out white skies and very contrasty brush with distracting hard dark lines, especially with the trees in the upper right. Yes, cropping out the sky would improve the shot but that would still leave dark blocky voids. The solution was to simplify the background. That was my mission.
Snow Geese #2. This is the same idea as the first image but with a much better background. I still have a few hard dark lines at the top of the image but it is much better than image 1. High key backgrounds work if they are clean and colorful and the foreground subject(s) are properly lit. Finally, in most of my warm toned images I try to include something blue like the reflection of some blue sky. I think that brings out the warm colors more.
Lighting – Lit foreground subjects against darker backgrounds generally work better than the other way around. If your main subject is shadowed and poorly lit, a bright glaring background will almost always ruin it. High key images though are an art form and work well if your subject is well lit and your background is simple, white and angelic. I rarely see that technique used for wildlife or landscapes.
Color – Warm subjects against cool backgrounds make them pop. You can achieve this with lighting choices too. I almost always include something blue in a predominantly warm image. Warm/cold color juxtapositions almost always work. A little contrasting blues in an image actually enhance and bring out warm tones much like the right amount of spice brings out flavor in foods.
The more you think about subject/background relationships and separation while on location, the more consistently you get at producing more impactful images. You can learn these both on location and in the editing phase. Before you shoot, do a background check!
In any mountain/canyon landscape where there is a hard line between terrain and sky, I look for maximum contrast and color separation. That’s often a matter of lighting more than anything else as seen here in this winter sunset of the Chugach Mountains near Tahneeta Pass.