Portrait photography tip: Find a neutral background

Thursday 18 March 2021, 13:31 by Elja Trum | 3,897 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Including the surroundings in a photo is fun, but a photo with a neutral background makes for a nice change during your photo session.

Michelle - f/2.2, 1/250s, 1600 ISO @ 50mm
Look for a neutral wall outdoors, or indoors close to a window. Try to keep some distance between your subject and the wall. This prevents unwanted shadows on the wall, and the blur in the background also makes small imperfections invisible.

It does not have to be a white wall, of course. A coloured wall can also make a neutral background. In the photo above, I placed Michelle in front of a concrete wall.

You can move a few things out of the way to create an empty wall. Make sure you put everything back neatly when you are finished. Is there still a socket or another distracting element in the frame? With Lightroom, Photoshop or another editing programme, you can easily remove it.

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About the author

Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.

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Elja Trum

Photofacts; everything to do with photography!

Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about Photofacts

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