How to Quickly Improve Your Images by Checking the Background

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There are several things that you can do to help improve your images right away, without buying any new stuff. I’m going to give you one thing that you can implement right away and see results immediately.

The best part is it’s so simple it’ll blow your mind. Ready for it? Here it is…

Check the background!

That’s the gist of the tip, but let’s get a little more specific. The background, or all the stuff behind and around your subject, can actually make or break your image.

Do you carefully consider the background when you’re shooting? Or are you too focused on the subject to notice what’s in behind? Have you ever had a tree or post growing out of someone’s head?

Improve Images Check Background 03 — See how busy and distracting the background is in this image?

Improve Images Check Background 04 — Can you see the difference the background makes?

Well, suffice to say the background is very important. If you aren’t paying attention to what’s back there you need to start doing so.

There are several elements of an image that will draw the eye. So you want to watch out for and avoid having any of these things appear in your background.

FOUR things to avoid in your background:

Strong colors

Any super vibrant or saturated colors will grab attention, especially warm tones like red, orange, and yellow. That guy in the yellow jacket, the red car, and even the bright green grass in the background will all steal attention away from your intended subject.

indigenous dancer in full regalia dances

indigenous dancer in full regalia dances at an event

In the images above, do you notice the red backpack and bright pink pompoms before you notice the subjects?

High contrast areas

The eye is drawn to contrast, the difference between bright highlights and deep dark shadows. This includes little spots of sunlit areas next to darker areas, highly textured areas of light and dark, etc.

Basically anything in direct sunlight will create this situation so it’s best to avoid it in the background.

Improve Images Check Background 01 — In this image, the high contrast areas (hot spots and dark shadows alternating) in the background take attention away from the couple. The bright green grass (even though it’s really out of focus) adds a double whammy here for things to avoid in the background.

Bright spots

The extreme brightest part of an image will draw the viewer’s eye like nothing else. If that area is in the background you have an issue. Watch for specular highlights, in particular, things like reflections off cars, the sun itself, light color shiny objects in the light will reflect it back like a mirror.

Improve Images Check Background 11 — Ironically there is an actual mirror in this image and it’s reflecting a bright area from the bed cover, and that is distracting you away from the dancer’s face which is in shadow.

Sharpness or sharp focus

The eye is naturally drawn to the part of an image that is in sharp focus. This is why portrait photographers love to make the background blurry and out of focus, and why landscape photographers like their entire image to be sharp.

But if your background is equally as sharp, it doesn’t help the viewer identify the subject of the image. There’s not one single area for the viewer to land on and quickly identify as the subject, so they may struggle to understand your image and it loses impact.

Improve Images Check Background 06 — Notice the bright green grass here is also very sharp so it draws your eye away from the dancer. So it’s another double hit on the things to avoid list.

If you’re going to have your background sharp make sure it’s obvious where you want the viewer to look using another method.

The lighting must highlight the subject, or it must be brighter and more vibrantly colored than the background. Of course, image composition is important as well.

Improve Images Check Background 05 — Here’s the same image with some processing done to lower the saturation, sharpness, and texture of the grass and on the flags in the background as well.

So next time you’re considering shooting at f/11, think about what you want people to see in your image. Do you really need that much depth of field and focus? Or would f/4 be a better choice?

How to fix this?

Okay so now you know what to watch out for, how do you fix it and solve this issue?

Awareness is the first step and is the key. So slow down and take a look at not only the background but all the edges of your image before you shoot.

young indigenous dancer with a distracting red bottle in photo

young indigenous dancer without the distracting red bottle

In the two images above, can you see how distracting that red bottle is in the first shot? I shot quite a few frames and waited until he rotated so that the bottle wasn’t visible and I got the shot.

If you notice any of the four things listed above in your background try and adjust your camera angle to remove them. You may have to physically move to the left or right or find an entirely new spot from which to shoot.

Improve Images Check Background 13 — This image was easily fixed by changing my camera position a little when shooting, cropping in a bit tighter, and a bit of image processing later to tone down the highlights on the bed cover.

Then go ahead and take a shot. If you aren’t sure if the background is distracting or not, here’s another little trick.

Turn your camera upside down!

Yes you read that right. Play the image back so you can see it on the back of the camera and then turn it upside down.

By viewing the image inverted it causes your brain to see colors and shapes and not the focus on the thing that you know is the intended subject. Your eye will immediately be drawn to the brightest, most contrasty areas in your image.

Improve Images Check Background 12 — Here’s the BEFORE image again, but upside down. Where does your eye go? I get drawn to the bright spot in the mirror, and on the bed, and what is now in the lower right corner. She’s lost.

TAKE NOTE, if you see anything that grabs your attention other than the subject, THAT is the thing you need to get rid of in the background.

Next, reframe it, take another image and do the entire process again until you’re happy with the result.

Improve Images Check Background 14 — Here’s the AFTER shot, now where do your eyes land? Can you see there is less to distract you away from the dancer here – so if it works upside down, it will work right side up!

Learn How to Edit Photos

I demonstrate this “upside down” technique quite often during my LIVE photo editing livestream sessions I broadcast every Wednesday on my YouTube Channel.

You can go to this page on YouTube and set a reminder so you’ll be notified when I go live. I edit subscriber submitted photos, and answer questions about photo editing in real time. I also have a playlist of past photo editing livestreams for you to browse as well. If you look in the description of each video, you’ll see a table of contents with links to parts of the videos that you might be interested in.

Practice at home using your existing images

If you can’t get out and take photos right now, you can practice at home. Just grab a few of your images to review and use the upside-down trick.

Choose images that just didn’t quite live up to your expectations, or didn’t get the rave reviews you expected on social media. Open them up using your image editing or viewing software on your computer and rotate them 180 degrees.

View one image at a time, and really notice where your gaze lands on each. Then see if you can crop the image to improve it or do some tone control using local adjustment tools in your editing software to tone down any offending areas.

Slow down and take your time

The bottom line here is that if you slow down and take more time before you press the shutter button – you can avoid having such distracting elements in the background. That will help you take your images to the next level without buying new gear or anything more complicated.

Just slow down!

Improve Images Check Background 02 — Here is the AFTER image of the wedding couple with a much nicer, cleaner background. See how much more they stand out now?

For the situation above, this was much easier to fix when shooting. I like to work smarter not harder! I moved my camera position to avoid all the background issues and came in closer to simplify the whole photo.

Trying to solve all the issues in the other image with post-processing would have been a lot more work.

This is why you want to slow down, examine your background, correct if necessary, and take a new shot (or two or three). The time you spend doing that will SAVE you time later, I guarantee.

Cheers,