Portrait Photography: Tips and Ideas on Choosing Backgrounds

Portrait Photography is one of the most common types of Photography. A good portrait isn’t just composed of a nice subject and good lighting. Sometimes photographers become so preoccupied with their subject that they tend to forget another important element that greatly affects the composition, and sometimes the other way around: they focus too much on the background, which often results in photos that have overpowering backgrounds. Here are some tips and ideas on choosing backgrounds for portrait photography:

Shooting portraits indoor:

Seamless Paper Backdrops

Most portrait studios use seamless paper backdrops. The most common colors of backdrop that studios use are black and white. If they wish to change the darkness of the black and brightness of white they can do so by changing the light setting in a way that will help them achieve the effect that they want. Like positioning one light with a honeycomb grid at the center, facing the black background to achieve a gradient effect.

Photo by: Alex

Cloth

You can also opt to choose a cloth as background for you portrait. Just make sure that the colors aren’t too distracting and don’t have the exact same color or shade of your subject’s clothing.

Photo by: Alexjtam

Colored Gels

If you don’t have the above-mentioned materials you can use colored gels and attach them to your flash or studio lights and position them at the back, facing a white wall. You can then start shooting and enjoying your white wall turned into a colored background.

Photo by: RLHyde

Photo by: Michael Sharman

Backgrounds that will help tell a story

Another idea for choosing a background for your portraits is choosing a background that will help you tell something about the subject. For example, if you’re taking a portrait of an author, you can use a bookcase as his background. If you’re taking a portrait of a teacher, you may use a blackboard as his or her background.

Photo by: Adam Foster

Shooting Portrait Outdoors

Look Up, Down, Left and Right

Look everywhere and search for potential backgrounds. There are lots of ideas for portrait backgrounds when you’re shooting outdoors. You can use the grass as background by making your subject sit on the grass and taking a shot from a high angle. Or you can use the blue skies by taking a shot from a slightly low angle. Use the trees, leaves, lampposts or graffiti walls, if there are any.

Photo by: ArnaudAnciaux

Crop out distractions

There may be times when we ignore, or are not aware that there are some distracting elements in the background, especially when the distracting element is positioned at the sides or corners of the frame. Good thing you can edit them out during post-processing. You can crop out the distractions when you’re post-processing, or if you’re using a film or analog camera you can always take another shot and re-frame or recompose your shot.

Blur the Background

If you still can’t find a nice background for your portraits, you can just blur the background by adjusting your aperture to its widest opening. You can also ask your subject to move further away from the background to help you achieve a blurred background.

Photo by: Scott Butner