Maus' Photography Tutorials IV - Isolating your subject

Another of my mad tutorials, this time on using compositional principles to emphasise the important parts of your image.

There are more of these tutorials, and there will be more yet. Some are nearly complete, others are just scribbles in my notebook, but I will get around to it. I am trying to focus on the areas where the particular problems of toy photography need a specific approach, as there are already many wonderful resources to tell you about general principles of photography. I can particularly recommend Cambridge in Colour). However, I have also covered some general principles, such as composition and RAW format, as I enjoyed researching them and hopefully the tutorials will be of use to someone else.

If there is something you would like me to cover that is not on this list, let me know and I will do my best to accommodate. Also, if there is something you would like to add or ask about this tutorial, please do so.

Maus' Photography Tutorials

I; Basic kit for studio lighting of toys
II; Posing your subject for toy portrait photography
III - Isolating your subject
IV; Shapes and lines
V; Lighting basics
VI - Studio portrait lighting styles
VII; Reducing blur and noise
VIII; HDR versus RAW

Composition - Isolating your subject

Every picture tells a story. The stories with most impact are the ones that tell the tale coherently, vividly and with the fewest interruptions. The aim of composition is to select and arrange the elements in your image so that they tell the story in the most compelling way possible. This requires that the visual elements important to conveying your message catch the eye and are viewed and reviewed in a way that produces the desired response.

This might seem like a dauntingly long process to embark on before you have even got out your camera. However, using even a few of these tricks can make a sizeable difference to the impact of your image. Also, with practice, many of these processes will become almost automatic. You will have trained your eye to see where things work and where they don';t and know what to do about them without too much effort. And don't forget, no amount of fancy post processing or expensive equipment will save a boring shot. It is worth the effort.

Decide on your point(s) of interest

Many toy photographs are simple portraits. The aim of a portrait is to present the sitter in a way that conveys what you want to say about them; who they are, what they are like and what they are doing.

The most important element (the point of interest) of a portrait will usually be the front of the face. The eyes in particular draw our gaze as we are trained, through millions of years of evolution, to look there for clues as to the character and intentions of the person we are interacting with. There can be other elements used to convey the take home message. This could be other parts of the body, such as hands, which can convey emotion or action. It can also be inanimate objects, such as the clothing the sitter is wearing, or objects around them, which can tell the viewer what the sitter is doing or place them in a context.

Decide how you are going to tell your story. What elements will be needed? Chose too few and the image might be boring. Too many, and it becomes a recipe for visual indigestion, making it impossible to identify and process all the information in it. The general rule is to aim for simplicity. This will increase the impact of your image and reduce the work you need to do in managing your shot. Chose the minimum number of elements needed to do the job. If it adds nothing useful, leave it out.

Prioritise your point(s) of interest

Rank your points of interest in order of importance. The most important ones will need to be the most visually compelling, with the others having progressively less impact, according to their relative importance.

Isolate your point(s) of interest

When you look at a scene, your brain automatically identifies the interesting bits and filters out the rest. However, the camera doesn't discriminate in the same way. It captures everything in front of it equally. This can lead to a blooming, buzzing confusion. You therefore need to do in the photograph what your brain does all by itself and raise your points of interest out of this chaos

The aspects that make an element interesting include

• The absence of any other potentially distracting elements
• Its size relative to the picture plane and other elements
• Its tonal contrast with its immediate and general background
• The intensity and warmth of its hue
• Its hue contrast with its immediate and general background
• Its sharpness
• Its texture
• The degree of contrast within it

You can use one or more of these methods to increase the impact of your point of interest. They can work together or against each other and the chances are you won';t need all of them to achieve your desired effect.

 

Cut it out

The easiest way to isolate your point of interest is to just cut out all the extraneous stuff. You can do this by cropping in close. All that can be seen are the bits you want to be seen. You can also ensure your background has nothing distracting in it. Use a plain backdrop, shoot against a blank wall or down against a plain floor.



Increase size

The larger the element in the picture, the closer and more important it will appear. Making the main point of interest dominate the picture, taking up most of the space, makes it compelling, focusing the viewer's gaze just on it and its attributes.



Blur it out

The more interesting something is, the more closely we focus on it, leaving all the other irrelevant stuff to take care of itself. A way to mimic the selective attention of the visual system is to throw the extraneous elements out of focus, implying that they are not important enough to worry about. Use a narrow depth of field to isolate your point of interest against a pleasantly blurred background.



Increase tonal contrast

The brain is designed to attend to the unexpected; something that is different to what is around it. A subject with light skin and light hair against a light background is just more of the same and won't grab your attention. Visually, it will also disappear. You will have to hunt to find it and, chances are, you won't bother. Therefore, you need to make your point of interest radically different to what is around it in order to catch the eye. One way to do this is to ensure that it is the area with the greatest tonal contrast to the dominant tone, which is usually the background. In a dark scene, the light areas will be most intriguing. In a light scene, the eye will be drawn to the dark areas. Analyse the tonal value of your point of interest and chose a background tone that contrasts with it. Less important points of interest can be ranged in terms of their degree of contrast with the dominant tone of the image, making them gradually disappear into the background.



Increase colour contrast

In a similar vein to analysing tonal contrast, the colours in your scene (the hues) can be manipulated to make your points of interest stand out in contrast, whilst minimising the impact of competing elements. In a scene that is largely one hue, the eye will pick out the areas in the complimentary colour and discount the ones in a similar hue. All other things being equal, warm (red-based) colours will visually approach and be more compelling, with cool (blue-based) colours tending to recede. The more intense (saturated) the colour, the greater the impact. A bright orange tie in a blue-hued picture will therefore jump out and hit you in the eye.

Chose the colours of your scene so that the PoIs are in contrasting colours to their immediate and general backgrounds. Doing this can also boost the colour of the point of interest. So, using a blue-based background will bring out the warm, orange tones in Caucasian skin.



To fade out less relevant elements, match them as closely as possible to the dominant hue. This is a handy way to neutralise a distracting but necessary element, such as a bright shirt. Chose a background that matches the colour of your distracting element more than it matches the colour of your point of interest. It will blend in with the background, without your point of interest following it. To prevent it from disappearing completely, you could use a back or rim light to illuminate the edges and so separate it from the background without drawing too much attention.



Working with colour contrast will help when using tonal contrast can't. For example, if you are photographing a figure in a white shirt and black trousers, there is no tone that will contrast more with the figure's skin tone than either of the other two tones. White will contrast most strongly with black and emphasise the trousers. Black will contrast most strongly with white and emphasise the shirt. All midtones will be more similar to the tone of the skin than to the two extremes. A way to solve this is to chose a background colour that contrasts with the skin tone, so something blue-based. Using a muted hue in a mid tone will minimise is potential to distract.



Push it forwards

An element standing in the foreground is more visually compelling than one that is lurking in the background. Of course, a photograph is a two-dimensional object, with no real foreground or background. The illusion of depth therefore has to be provided by a few tricks.

• Colour: All other things being equal, warm (red-based) colours will visually approach and, with cool (blue-based) colours tending to recede. Making your point of interest warmer toned that its background will bring it towards the viewer.

• Overlap: An object that partially obscures another will appear to be in front of it. Place some element in the background that your point of interest can stand in front of to give the impression of distance from the background.

• Texture: The closer something is to you, the coarser its texture appears. Making sure there is nothing in the background that has a coarser texture than your point of interest will help it come forwards. Variation of texture between the PoI and it background will also help pick it out.

So, those are some ways to isolate your points of interest using contrast and some elements of composition. I will look more at using composition to draw attention to your points of interest in the Tutorial IV - Shapes and Lines.

 

Tonal contrast is used a lot in photography. However, if it is used well, it is not obvious that this is how the eye has been drawn to the subject matter. Have a look at some of your favourite portrait photographers and see how they have used it. It is subtle but effective.

 

AutumnSaleen, It is all practice, practice, practice and keeping the principles of composition in mind as you shoot. There is no way you can think of all of them, or you would never press the shutter release, but this one in particular is useful.