Controlling Portrait Backgrounds: How to use Depth-of-Field and Angle-of-View for Composition Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony North open for chapter 2 my
book stunning digital photography I'm
going to show you how to control your
background the background is one of the
most critical parts of composition
people often focus on a subject and find
a good focal point but then have a
background that's cluttered or
distracting for this exercise I'm going
to have Chelsea stand in this spot and
not move from it I am then going to show
you all the different backgrounds that I
can choose from so first I'll do what
many people do which is to take a shot
as I'm standing here as you can see it's
not a bad shot but the background is
fairly uninteresting so what I'm going
to do is I'm going to move in 360
degrees around Chelsea
she'll rotate to face me but you won't
move from that spot wherever you are you
always have 360 degrees of background to
choose from if you can move so you have
a lot of different options just by
walking around your subject the second
way you can control it is by moving up
or down no you don't necessarily need a
ladder or anything you can just crouch
down to get the sky as your background
or lift your camera up to get the ground
as your background just by raising the
camera up and down I was able to put
between a completely blue sky background
the green grass or a background that
shows the horizon the third way you can
control the background is by zooming in
and out you don't necessarily need to
make your model bigger in the photo when
you zoom in because you can also step
back so to demonstrate this I will step
forward and away from Chelsea but I will
keep her about the same size in the
frame and it will show you how changing
the perspective adjust the background
so that's what it looks like when I'm
standing fairly close to Chelsea and I'm
zoomed way back now if I step back and
zoom in you'll see a completely
different effect so in this photo you
can see less of the background that's at
about 100 millimeters if I step back
even farther and zoom in to 200
millimeters you'll see the background
becomes very narrow and becomes more
blurred so if you as the photographer
can move around those are three things
you can do to control the background
move around your subject 360 degrees
move up and down or step forward and
back while zooming in and out neither of
you can move maybe you're in a crowded
area or say a zoo what you can do is
adjust the aperture to change the depth
of field now as you'll learn in the book
choosing a lower f-stop number decreases
the background sharpness a higher f-stop
number increases the background
sharpness now I'll show you how that can
change the effect of a picture as you
can see at f/4 a low f-stop number the
background is very blurred here at f-22
a higher f-stop number the background is
much sharper there's one last thing you
can do to control your background
without moving yourself or the subject
and that's by using flash normally your
camera will expose the foreground and
the background will be at about the same
exposure because the same light will be
falling on your foreground and the
background but if you turn your flash up
that will add light to the foreground
and the background in comparison will
seem much darker now it's a little bit
hard to do that with sunlight but if you
have a powerful flash you can still do
it
so first I'll take a shot with no flash
at all
as you can see here the background and
the foreground have about the same
exposure next I'll turn the flash on and
turn it all the way up so it puts out as
much light as possible as you can see by
properly exposing the foreground the
background in comparison became much
darker this is for chapter two my book
stunning digital photography which
covers composition if you liked this
video the e-book includes many more
videos like this you want to see new
videos as I release them click Subscribe
up above and if you liked it please
click like down below have any questions
or comments you can send me an email my
email address is Tony at North org or
you can look up Tony Northrup
photography on Facebook thank you