1. Why the background is more important than the subject
15.01.2024
One mistake I see a lot of photography beginners make is that they focus more on finding the right subject than anything else. No wonder, any book on photography will tell you: "If your picture lacks a subject, the viewer has no idea what the picture is about". This is not wrong and a good tip for beginners, but it is only half the truth.
To illustrate this more clearly: Imagine that one of the most influential boxing fights between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier took place not in Madison Square Garden, but in some random backyard. A great subject, but everything around it, not so much. Then imagine some amateur boxers, promoted to the nines, fighting in Madison Square Garden. Not such a great subject, but it will probably still be a great event because everything else works.
The same applies to images. A good background can make a mediocre subject look good and vice versa. Finding good subjects is not as difficult as many people think. For landscape photography, it could be a tree or a simple boat on a lake. What makes it so easy is that you just take a single detail from the landscape and call it your subject. Finding the right background is much harder because it contains more objects that need to work together and takes up more space in the frame.
The same applies to images. A good background can make a mediocre subject look good and vice versa. Finding good subjects is not as difficult as many people think. For landscape photography, it could be a tree or a simple boat on a lake. What makes it so easy is that you just take a single detail from the landscape and call it your subject. Finding the right background is much harder because it contains more objects that need to work together and takes up more space in the frame.
When I am out shooting, I often find myself not looking for subjects, because they more or less jump out at me, but looking for the right backgrounds. Since I shoot in black and white most of the time, this becomes even more important. The lack of colour makes it harder to tell the viewer what the subject is. Especially in landscape photography, with the lack of clear lines or harsh shadows that are easier to find in the city, most of the picture will just be different shades of grey.
The subject of the picture is quiete mediocre. Just a normal tree. What makes the picture good is the relationship between the tree and the gap in the tree line behind it.
Even though the trees in the background "touch" the subject, the contrast makes is easier for the spectator to know what to look for in the picture.
Another important part of a working image is the sky. I often just decide to go out and shoot when I see an interesting sky. Evenly clouded, big soft clouds or even blue skies are the most favoured in my pictures. A good sky can add or subtract so much quality to an image. Sometimes the sky alone determines the atmospheric impact of the image. Try it yourself, shoot the same scene with a clear sky and a cloudy sky. The effect will be completely different. Especially in B&W, the sky can add even more drama to the image.
So how do you achieve all this? Contrast! In today's editing culture, contrast seems to be just a word to describe a slider in Lightroom that changes the relationship between dark and light tones, but its actual definition encompasses much more. By definition, contrast is simply the difference between two things. This includes technical differences such as colours or shades of grey, but also subject differences such as the sky and, say, a tree. The eye is constantly looking for differences everywhere we look. If something is different, we recognise it immediately. Take advantage of that. Take advantage of the negative space created by the sky or similar zones of colour/shading such as (long exposed) water or snow-covered areas.