Catching Up: Lesson 1 - Backgrounds/Locations: My Backgrounds

Hello!

I just found this CiC-SoP tutorial and wanted to start as quickly as possible.

I've attached 3 photographs of local backgrounds and hoped for your feedback.

The first is of a garage door and is not in focus as I didn't want to focus on the lines of the door but rather, the white of the door.
http://i41.tinypic.com/2rqg7si.jpg

The second is of the outside of my home.


The third is of a large (8-foot to 9-foot) bush in my yard. It is often in the shade, although in this shot, it is not.

I attempted to upload all 3 jpegs but only the 1st worked with tinypic. The others I had to upload as attachments. If anyone can tell me how to upload multiple files with tinypic I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you for your (candid) feedback!

Barney

Hi Barney,

It took me a while to work out what "CiC-SoP tutorial" was; School of Portraiture and why you'd think we wanted backgrounds :)

But all is now apparent :o

When using TinyPic, for second and subsequent uploads, you click the small "Upload" link that sits between the wobbly "tinypic" word and "Sign In" link in their dialog, not the big "Click Here ..." button in the forum again

I have improved the instructions by including this there too, thanks.

As to the suitability of the backgrounds, it depends how far in front of them you can get the model and camera, my recommendation would be the model should be no more than half way between the camera nad the background, closer to the camera gives better separation. Much depends on size of subject, focal length and apertures available, etc.

Colin will be better to advise.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ...

Hi Barney,

Great to have you with us :)

First up - when posting photos, it would be great if you can keep them a little bigger - something with the long dimension being 800 to 1000 pixels is ideal (or even slightly bigger if they're ones of people).

In terms of those backgrounds being suitable for portraits - personally - I think you'd possibly get an interesting shot with the bricks (it's something I'd happily shoot a set in front of), but I think you'd probably find the other two pretty "boring".

Have a look through my outdoor portraits gallery to get an idea as to some of the things I've used.

http://www.pbase.com/cjsouthern/outdoor_portraits