Portrait tip: Leave enough space between your subject and the background
Thursday 26 December 2019, 14:07 by Elja Trum | 4,636 views | 1 commentThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
To make a portrait stand out, you need to separate your model from the background. Leave enough space between your model and the background. This separates your model from the background and draws the viewer's attention straight to the model.
This goes wrong more often than you might think. When I want to photograph someone and they get ready to pose, they regularly stand very close to the background. So my first question is usually for them to take a few steps forward.
For example, are you using a wall as the background? Don't place your model half a metre from the wall. Leave at least a metre or three between your model and the wall.
It can also work well to leave 10 metres or more between the model and the wall. This will make the wall fall into the blur of the photo more quickly, and your model will really stand out from the wall.
The same naturally applies to a forest, as in the photo above. Leave enough space between your model and the trees and branches to prevent them from appearing sharp in the frame and therefore attracting more attention in your photo.
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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1 comment
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guest wrote on Tuesday 31 December 2019 at 17:19 | replyI just started with photography again. And with photofacts I’ll certainly manage to get back to where I left off. Nice and good explanation of camera settings .
Translated from Dutch.
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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 PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
