Sometimes you just can’t get your subject away from being in front of a distracting background. When this happens, here are some tips:

• Moving yourself left or right
• Getting yourself to a higher or lower position
• Using a large aperture (small number) to blur out the background.

Other things to remember are:

• The viewer’s eyes goes to the object in focus.
• With a large aperture and focusing on your subject, your subject will be in focus and the background blurred.

Practice Tips:

Find a subject with a distracting background. Using a small aperture (large number), capture the image. Now, search out a perspective that minimizes the distraction. Once you find a good perspective, select a large aperture (small number) and capture the image. Compare the two images and note the differences in the background. In the first photo, you are distracted from the subject because of the background. In the second photo, with the background blurred and the subject in focus, the background is less distracting as the human eye goes to the object in focus (the subject).

Written by Ron Kness
Image by MerleGradle