The subject can be in sharp focus. The light is beautiful, yet the photo still looks wrong. More often than not, the fault lies not with the settings on your camera or in the focus on your subject, but with the surroundings of your subject: the colorful bag on the ground; the line running behind someone’s neck; the messy shelf behind you; the doorway that has crept into your frame; or the vivid splash of color distracting from the focal point of your composition.
The problem with background clutter is that the camera does not distinguish between important and unimportant background elements the way our brains do. While you are taking a photograph, your brain has selected your subject (your person, your coffee mug, your plant, your street corner). What the camera sees are all elements in the shot as equally relevant and important. Background clutter can cause competing distractions when your main focal point is in focus. Bright background elements and strong shapes or bright highlights may be too intense and demand your viewer’s attention from the focal point of your photo.
One easy fix: move closer to your subject. The closer you move toward your subject, the less area your background will cover. This doesn’t mean you are looking to crop into a close shot for every photo. It means looking at your composition and determining if the focal point of your shot is lost or lost for lack of a background. By moving forward just a few steps, a cluttered table may disappear from your frame, a lot of unwanted floor space is lost, or your portrait is less likely to be perceived as the image of an entire room.
Changing angles is another way to remove clutter without touching anything in the room at all. If the lamp is behind your subject’s head, step off-axis. If the bookshelf is too busy, lower the camera so a plain wall fills more of the background. If the light from the window is too much for the shot, move your subject or angle so that your light source doesn’t become the star of the image. Small angle changes are great to practice because they encourage a more thoughtful approach to the elimination of unwanted objects prior to editing.
Simplifying a scene is often the most effective solution. Relocate the messy cables. Hide a book. Close an open closet. Clear a portion of your tabletop and add one item or use only that one item, a clean sheet of paper or a blank wall or table. These clean surfaces can make objects’ shadows, shapes and textures clearer and more visible. For portraits, take a look at the space around your subject’s head and shoulders. The background does not need to be empty, but it should not create accidental distractions, and if an object is unintentionally distracting in the background, it is best to change the environment so it no longer competes with the subject you are photographing.
Look through your next ten photos and find the background. Look beyond your subject. What is distracting? Look for bright corners. Look for distracting shapes and objects. Look for unwanted edges or colors competing for attention with the subject. Then choose one to change. Change the position in order to change the environment. This makes the difference between the two images more obvious and clearly shows how much a good shot benefits from a clean background.
The cleaner your shot, the more viewers are able to enjoy it, the less background they have to distract them from your subject. With a clear, simple background, your focal point becomes easier to find. The light in the composition becomes more visible. Before blaming the photo settings and buying a filter or lens, take a closer look at the objects that are not your focal point. There may be no better way to take your image up a step than to remove it from the shot.