Once you have the basic gear, it’s time to use it.
The Background
Every image, unless it is of a flat surface, has a background.
Portraits therefore have backgrounds, but this is a tricky space. A background could simply be anything blurred out to an incoherent collection of blobs, or it could be a deliberate augmentation to the subject, a story telling element.
Blur
Using a wide aperture lens at its wider apertures (f1.2 to 2.8), especially a longer lens at a close distance to the subject, will blur the background out. This is called “shallow depth of field”. This is an easy trick to make any background pleasant, even making ugly backgrounds attractive. Even if you have a reasonably slow “kit” zoom, getting closer to your subject than they are to their background can help.
Some rio fencing, bleacher steps and bike parts, all blurred out to be a support to the sharp subject. This was achieved with an aperture of f4, which is not super strong at this, but a longer lens length helped.
Maximum use of a longer fast lens wide open turned a busy hotel foyer into a smooth support act. EM1 mk2 and 75mm f1.8.
Black
If you are using artificial light, any background can be turned to black. This is a good and consistant trick, but can be over used. The technique is as simple as underexposing for ambient light (shooting a black frame), then using flash to light only the subject.
Your main tool here is flash flagging. Flagging is any form of blocking to help you control the spread of light. Transparent umbrellas spread light easily, so if this is an appealing technique, you will need to cover the back of one, buy one with a backing or put up a panel to block stray light.
Using a black background can help, but even then, too much light can rob you of your pure black.
A single soft box from the side. The actual background was an empty room. One huge advantage of black is that you can brush out any strays easily.
Using black does force a feel on your shots. It is great for intimacy, drama and strength.
White
White is a bright and happy backdrop, easily achieved if you have a spare light at hand. Most places offer a clean wall space, but few are “ceiling” white, so you need to push it along a bit. The basic idea is to over expose the background, be it a grey of off white wall (even black if done well), usually by about two stops. If over done, you may produce a flare-halo effect, so experiment a little, or use that if wanted.
A Supplied Backdrop
These take a lot of forms from paper, cloth, vinyl or even wood. Lots of choices such as textured or not, what colour, what size, how will you light it (which can change tone and colour) and so-on.
My own collection includes the excellent but expensive Lastolite 5x7+ collapsible (Black/Grey and Pewter/Walnut), some cheaper Neewer 5x7 to 3x5 black/white or 5-in-1’s and various sizes of cloth from 6x9’ to 12x20’ (green, black, white, grey) and a 5x7 Kate grey microfibre. My special bespoke trick is a series of mottled leather-look vinyl furniture upholstery cloth rolls. They have a subtle texture in four colours (donkey brown, light tan, caramel leather and stone grey) and are 1.4m wide x 2-3m long (or up to 30m).
Three of the four (Grey is missing), all for about $200au. They roll well, do not crease and can be cleaned.
Tough, easily smoothed and sporting a subtle and beautiful almost hand painted texture, these rolls, costing about $60au for 2m of length are similar to look at to the Sarah Oliphant or Savage textures as used by Annie Liebovitz and others, I especially wanted to get the ragged edge-multi drop look Leibovitz used for the newer Star Wars cast movies. Their only slight down side is mild shininess, but this can be fixed/avoided. Something I really like is the cloth-like look, but without excessive wrinkles.
These all need some way of standing up, except the Lastolite’s that can lean on a wall, so I have a couple of stands with clamps and some expeandable curtain rods or a magnetic bracket for the collapsible ones. Most of these can be either backdrops or double up as flagging, diffusers or reflectors. This gives me width, textures and colours up to a point. I intend to add to these a set of simple colours for more dramatic tones like scarlett, deep blue, green and purple.
Post Processing.
Even if you do decide on a background, post processing can modify it to some extent or even supply textures and looks that are not there. Since COVID, artificial backgrounds have become common to apply and still photography has been using these for some time. The secret to infinite backgrounds may be a simple as photographing various textures or downloading them, processing these differently and shooting your portraits against a chroma-green backdrop for easy cut-outs later.
All of the images below were shot against a neutral grey background (middle), then a brush tool was applied and the colour changed. Some vignetting was added to a few, but otherwise, this is how they came. Notice how some compliment different elements of the subject, others create a distinct feel. When I shot these for Telstra Australia, I submitted the top three and the grey and to my surprise, they used the blue (and other colours for other people), which was cool as I only did them as a suggestion.
All the above images were shot against a neutral grey background (middle), then a brush tool was applied in capture 1 (there are other ways) and the colour changed using the white balance sliders.
Channelling Annie Leibovitz, this is the result of $300 of lighting, mods and stands shot against a white wall and some basic post processing using Capture 1, taken on an old EM5 mk1 and a basic 25mm f1.8 (less than $1000 all up).
The Environment
It is totally possible to use your subjects background for their portrait, even desirable if you are looking to add context to their shoot. Many portraitists do exactly that, only using flash to balance shadows or add “pop” to their shots.
Sometimes the place is as beautiful and relevant as the people. This could have doen with a little flash, but I was not a huge user of artificial light at the time.
If working with the environment, experiment with exposure tricks like underexposing, then filling with balanced flash. This allows you to make a boring midday shoot look like sunset or even night.
Just window light and an old wood panel wall. This was an impromptu preview of an upcoming fashion shoot, so we decided to channel a Vogue cover shot vibe (only the head piece was available).
If the environment is your choice, make sure you use all the elements avaialble. Foreground framing tools can make all the difference.
Sometimes they are all you have.
Personally, I use a mix of location, black, collapsible and vinyl/cloth hanging backdrops. Paper rolls are popular, but I have never been interested in them as I need to stay portable. From these I can colour change easily enough, but the texture is key. None, mild, irregular of patterned are all down to your choice. I prefer a subtle, even textures, like the Lastolite Pewter or my fabric rolls in lieu of multi thousand dollar Oliphant’s or natural looking testures like the Lastolite Walnut, which looks like an old wall in an abandoned cottage. For strong colours that may not be used often, I aim to get some colour cloth, likely velvet/velour in red etc.