This dried thistle head in the Painted Hills of Oregon caught my attention with its textures and lines. I’ve always loved thistles, alive and vital with their fluffy tops, and dried out cone-like structures of mystery and pattern.
To isolate this thistle, I used flash to force the background to go to black. The flash also dove into the textures highlighting the dimensional quality of the seed head. The black background brings out the delicate curves of the plant.
To create this yourself, get close to your subject and use full flash. I recommend putting your camera on a tripod to maximize the sharp focus of the subject.
If the subject like this thistle is moving in the breeze, just be patient and wait for it to pause. The flash allows the camera to photograph at higher speeds, but you want all the odds on your side.
subject is, people will look at the brightest spot in your photograph first. It can be the sun, a piece of out-of-focus trash, a garbage can, a rock – anything that is bright or reflects light. One technique to find distracting things in your background is to unfocus your lens a bit. Anything bright will become a large white blob. Depth of field can make this blob small or large on your final image depending upon how out of focus the blob is. If it is too much, recompose to exclude the distracting element or remove it.
Humans are great creators of trash and they spread it all over the place. It has become such a consistent part of our lives, we forget to pay attention to all the litter around us. It isn’t just bits and pieces of plastic bags, napkins, fast food containers, and candy wrappers. It is the garbage of our lifestyle. Look for phone or electrical wires sweeping across your landscape. Garbage cans are everywhere. Old cars litter the streets. Keep an eye out for all the manmade distractions that litter our lives. Pay attention to them and judge their value inside or outside of your photograph.
What is going on behind your main subject? If it is part of the story, fine, but if it isn’t, then it can grab the attention away from your subject. If there is movement in the background and the subject is still and the shutter speed slow, the movement can be even more accentuated. Photographing in populated areas, like busy farmers’ markets or cities, it is difficult to get away from the action around your subject. Nature subjects can also include action such as the wind blowing flowers and trees around, or animals moving behind the animal you are photographing. Either think of a way to incorporate the action into your story, or recompose or wait for the action to stop.
In the photograph to the right, I took a picture of the Haradim, ultra-orthodox Jews, standing at a table assisting other Jews to pray. Their table was set up outside of one of the largest and busiest shopping malls in Tel Aviv. I wanted to show the extreme contrast of modern Israel vs. old world Israel. Do you see the story I wanted to tell? No. I was so caught up in what interested me that I ignored the motorcyles, election posters, and all the typical distractions moving in and out of the mall. With no central subject, the viewer cannot tell the important point from the rest of the clutter.
The middle of the day finds the sun overhead casting dark contrasting shadows into the bright light, often disguising wildlife in the forest, and filling our images with distracting elements. In the example here, on the left, Brent photographed an elk resting in the forest of Jasper, Alberta, in Canada. The shadows make the elk almost invisible as they stripe across the large mammal. For a few minutes, a cloud passed over the sun and Brent was able to get the photograph he really wanted of the elk. The animal is now distinguishable from the forest and the shadows, the background now a complementary part of the photo.
Similar to inappropriate backgrounds, when the background is too bright or too dark in general, it can overwhelm a subject. We like to look at the brightest things first, like the sun or a big white blob. A dark subject against a bright background puts all the attention on the bright background and it can make it hard to look at the darker subject. There needs to be a compromise in tonality, in the shifts between bright and dark. The extremes hurt our eyes and make us feel uncomfortable when viewing the photograph. White backgrounds, such as the fog in the photograph of the deer to the right, can be the “kiss of death” composition. Dark backgrounds tend to work fine, but forget white backgrounds as they typically overwhelm the subject.
inclusion, but 
Photographing dark subjects against a light background or the reverse helps the subject stand out against its background. But photographing dark subjects against dark backgrounds (or the reverse) may lose the subject within its background. Small animals often have black whiskers and insects have dark or black legs and antenna which disappear into black backgrounds. These delicate parts of your subject need a constrasting background so they can remain visible.
Working in a confined environment like a zoo, conservatory or studio can help restrict the animal and can give you the time to choose more favorable backgrounds and lighting situations, but working in the field is much harder. You have to not only think about your subject, but the background as well. It takes a lot of trial and error to get all the pieces of the puzzle to come together: a great subject against a perfect background.
In the photograph to the right, Brent photographed a black-tailed deer in Yosemite National Park and almost missed the out-of-focus branch sneaking into the foreground. It didn’t help that the deer was looking right at the branch, as if to call out “hey, did you miss something?” By simply stepping to the side, Brent was able to shift the branch out of the foreground and still improve the photograph.
Foregrounds are part of the framing of the photograph. What lies within this frontal area can lead the eye to your subject or away. If the foreground is cluttered, clean it up. Feel free to move a stick or distracting piece of dry yellow grass in the foreground. Or use the elements in the photograph to enhance the subject, as with this crab spider in the lupine framed by the out-of-focus lupine flowers. The wash of color directs the eye to the spider instead of distracting the viewer from it. Become like a painter, paying equal attention to what you include as well as what you exclude from your masterpiece.
Flash changes the background. Electronic flash creates a bright white light, usually overwhelming any ambient light on the subject. It’s usually easy to spot a 
Let’s examine this process with a fiddlehead fern in a dimly lit forest. We needed to use the flash because the wind was blowing just enough, and the light level was so low, we’d end up with a blurry picture of the fern moving in the wind over the several second exposure. So we photographed it first with flash. Notice the reflections of the flash light on the hairs of the fern. The green color of the fern appears to be darker than our eyes “saw” the color. The fern stands out against the black background, but it is almost overwhelmed in constrast.
When you don’t have a longer lens, and your background isn’t cooperating, you can use an artificial background. This is simply something used to replace the background in your image. We’ve used a variety of clothing items like shirts or jackets, or our camera bag, or whatever we have with us.
There are many different kinds of backgrounds you can make out of different fabrics and materials. The colors should look like the natural habitat or background of your subject, and they need to be made to look like they are out of focus. Using clearly defined borders between colors will create blobs of color in the background if you are using a shallow depth of field. But one of the key reasons to use an artificial background, especially with closeup subjects, is to increase your depth of field without worrying about the background being in focus. By blurring and softening the background color shifts, you are creating an out-of-focus background without worrying about your depth of field.
Work with colors and tones that 
Making your own artificial background isn’t hard. We’ve created backgrounds with fabric and dyes, We’ve used a plywood board and painted it to resemble a fairly natural looking background. Be sure and carefully blend the colors while still damp or as you spray to soften the lines between the shifts of colors. Don’t be afraid to blend them over and over again, running one into the other to soften the lines. We’ve found fabric works well, and folds up easily for travel. You can become fairly creative with designing your own background and you become more sensitive to the ones you see through your viewfinder.
A perfect background doesn’t just happen. Attention is paid to it. For a moment or two, the photographer lets his or her attention drift from the main subject to the background and foreground to give it serious consideration. The eye should sweep back and forth across the viewfinder, examining all the items inside the frame. Then it should move around the inside edge of the frame, checking for any little bits sneaking into the frame from the edges. When time is available, some photographers using zoom lenses will pull back on the zoom a bit to see if there is anything that might sneak into the frame and then re-zoom into the final position. Take 
a second to lift your eye from the viewfinder to check for anything moving into or out of your background that could be distracting or in the way, and check the scene to see if it still matches what you want in the viewfinder. Then take a last long sweeping look around the viewfinder, considering each element, before you press the shutter. After some practice, this effort will become second nature to you.
The things that are in the background of any photograph might be important to the story of the photograph, but if it isn’t, how distracting is it? Is it small enough not to matter or is it brightly colored enough that it will attract attention? Is it a brighter or darker color than the background or the subject? How much attention does it attract? Is the amount of attention greater or less than your main subject?
Some backgrounds help your subject, while others ruin it. How does the background interact with the subject? Should it? Is the background habitat critical to the story of the subject? Or should it be easily ignored and not part of the story? If your subject is a part of the background or is looking at the background, then the background helps the subject as it is part of the story of the photograph. But if the background is merely a detail in the photographic story, ask yourself if it helps or hinders the story you are telling.
Sometimes the background is part of the story, and sometimes showing less of it gives the photograph more power, more importance in the story. How much of the background can you leave out and how should you do that?
Lens perspective is the view of the scene, including the background, that is captured onto the film through the lens. A wide angle lens sees a wider angle of view, therefore it captures a wider perspective. A long telephoto lens sees a very narrow view, therefore it captures a narrow perspective. In these three photographs of a marmot in the Olympic National Park, we kept our subject, the cooperative marmot, basically the same size in the frame. 
We’ve moved either further or closer to our subject and changed the focal length of the lens to change our background, since different focal lengths change the background perspective behind the subject. Across the valley, more than a mile away, rose a mountain with the last of the winter’s patches of snow on its steep sides. A 200mm lens, the shortest lens used in this series of pohtos, sees a lot of the background. You can see the snow on the far mountain, though it’s not clear if the white blobs are snow, clouds, or cartoon thoughts coming from the marmot.
Brent changed to a 300mm lens and moved farther back from the marmot to keep him about the same size in the frame. The 300mm lens sees a bit narrower perspective than the 200mm, so the white snow is just a blurry bit in the corner. Moving even further back, Brent changed to a 500mm lens with its very narrow perspective and the white snow packs are gone and the marmot is isolated against a green background.
In this example, we set up a dried teasal in the backyard. A wider angle lens like a 55mm requires a close working distance to photograph the subject and, as it sees a wider perspective, captures a lot of background. We see the out-of-focus parking lot and buildings in behind as well as the green grass. By moving backward from the subject, keeping it the same size in our viewfinder and not changing the exposure, we increase the magnification by using a longer lens such as a 200mm. Longer lenses narrow their view so you see a narrower perspective of the background. Now, only the green grass in the background is visible, isolating the subject against a neutral and undistracting background. Using a longer lens can help you to choose your background.
Pay close attention to the interaction between the subject and the background. From the earliest moments of life, most animals and humans are taught to watch the eyes. The eyes send and receive messages constantly, warning of friend or foe, and ensuring survival. The eyes play two crucial roles in the photographic composition for backgrounds. Eyes in the photograph attract the immediate attention of the viewer and tell them where to look, and the way a viewer’s eyes move around a photograph adds to the artistic quality of the photograph.
Viewers look at eyes. They pay attention to how they look and where they look. If the subject is looking at the viewer, the direction of the view is outwards. If the subject is looking at the foreground or background of the photograph, the viewer will follow the subject’s eye direction and look there. What is the subject looking at? What will the viewer look at? This becomes your second subject. Is it at some element that is part of the story, like a child looking at a flower, or is the subject looking at a distracting element that shouldn’t be in the photograph, calling the attention away from the subject and towards the unwanted element?
Are you commited to this background? Can you move your subject or move with your subject to a more interesting background choice? By simply changing your position, you can completely change the background. Step to the side, drop to your knees, stand taller, find a position that shifts the background to improve it. Re-examine the background carefully within the viewfinder as repositioning can invite new intruders into your frame. If you are limited in your movement, can the background be moved? In the two photographs shown here of fruit tree blossoms, a 
simple step to the side changed the background completely, from using the other blossoms in the tree as the background to the out-of-focus green grass beyond the tree as the background. The background impacts the story and the character of the photograph.
There are many ways to remove the background by changing the focal length of your lens, adjusting the aperture and depth of field, or simply recomposing so the background is minimized or gone, with all the attention on your subject. There are many times when you don’t want any form of background within your composition, such as when photographing wildlife within a cluttered zoo or enclosure area or working on flowers next to a busy road or housing project. Sometimes you don’t want the clutter in the background to intrude and all you want is the subject. Then fill the frame with the subject or use a technique that reduces the background to a non-event – invisible and undistracting to the viewer.
More than anything, the simpler your photograph, the less subjects and less distractions, the more impressive and powerful it is. Sometimes a dozen roses is a powerful statement, but a single rose can mean even more. Look at how you can adjust the background and foreground to simplify your subject, making it stand alone or be framed by its surroundings and not overwhelmed. It can be balanced against everything else in your viewfinder. Just remember, the simpler the better.