2. I wanted to find something in nature to be used as a "plain" backdrop and thought this fit the bill. I love the steely colour going from a deep grey at the bottom up to white at the top. I thought that if you took a head and torso shot on the cropped backdrop (1), the setting would only be viewed in terms of the colour palette rather than the scene that the uncropped version is (2).
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| (1) |
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| (2) |
3. I love the texture of this wood and thought it would make a good background for a head shot if you could place the person in front of it so that the wood itself had a slight blur. It needs to add interest to the background but not to the point that you are looking beyond the face and concentrating on the background.
4. In a similar way to the texture of the wood above, I found these bricks and thought that they would give an interesting texture to a head/torso shot.
5. Rust and decay are things that I noticed in my Landscape course figure in my pictures on a regular basis. I thought this rusting barn would make a good backdrop to a head/torso shot. It gives a rich colour with pattern and texture that I think would sit well behind a person provided that the light was right to capture the depth of it.
6. Again going for texture - I just prefer the background to have texture rather than be more specific. In my childhood my mother always positioned us in front of something for our photos - we were always in front of a specific target....a new car, somewhere on holiday that was an obvious landmark. I tend to go the other way in photographs - if there are people in them then the background doesn't compete. If I want to show a location then generally I do it without people being involved. For texture on this picture I have chosen wood - unfortunately my subject was also rather wooden so I decide the two went together.
