The trouble with br ight backgrounds
I love travel photography, but I sometimes find the bright background overpowers my subject. How can I stop this? Keith Mann
I know exactly what you mean, Keith. The problem is that when you expose for a main subject that’s tonally darker than whatever is behind it, the background ends up overexposing
slightly. I don’t mean that you are necessarily blowing the highlights in your photos, more that the balance between the subject and the background is wrong.
One option you should at least try is to take the exposure back a bit when you shoot, by dialling in one or maybe two thirds minus exposure compensation – although by doing this, you now risk underexposing your main focal point and losing detail in the shadows. An obvious solution is to shoot in softer light, but that’s not always possible; so, on the occasions this happens, I usually resort to subtle tweaks in Lightroom.
The example image above was taken in Indonesia at nearly midday. The bright sun was really intense on the foliage behind the woman on the bicycle, and although it isn’t technically overexposed, it certainly needs controlling.
In the second version of the shot, which I processed in Lightroom, the balance is better. I’ve done nothing at all to the main subject: I simply took an Adjustment Brush and masked over the background areas that are too bright, then brought them under control with the help of the Highlights and Whites sliders. This is another really good example of why you should shoot in your camera’s raw file format: compared with shooting in JPEG, it gives you more scope for manipulating the tones within the image and getting the balanced result you want.
If you want a non-processing option, you could also try shooting with a polariser on your lens, as this will help take any highlight glare off vegetation. You may still end up needing a few post-processing tweaks to perfect it.