WORK WITH BACKGROUNDS
Control detail and colour behind your subject, as this can make or break your macro shots
It’s surprisingly easy to overlook the background of a macro shot. We tend to associate macro with super-shallow depth of field, meaning we expect the background to be significantly out of focus in most images we shoot. This can lead to a clumsiness when composing our images, with little attention paid to what is happening behind the subject. This is a fatal error – if anything, the background plays an even more critical role in the success of a close-up image than in other photographic genres.
When we focus on a small object, at close focusing distances, we are cropping out a lot of the environment. The nature of using a macro lens means a small area of colour in the background can quickly become a frame-filling element, washing over the background and interacting with the subject far more aggressively than we might have first expected. This makes our choice of shooting angle even more important. An understanding of how background elements control the mood of our images will help our situational awareness, when looking for subjects and planning our framing.
For a reliable attractive choice when shooting outdoors, using foliage and other elements that exist in the immediate environment produces a highly natural look. Greens and blues give the impression of vegetation and the sky, which conveys an outdoor location. These palettes can be used to tell a story about the subject’s lifestyle and habitat, without the need for any particular details or literal references.
Try shooting up at your subject, which will not only give an unusual perspective, but can also make use of the sky as a seamless, colourful background.
Where this is not possible, there are times when controlling the background becomes a case of replacing it entirely. Sometimes there is little we can do to rearrange the background, when shooting out in-the-field. This is when bringing the subject indoors, or introducing artificial elements behind it, in-situ, has massive benefits. Producing customised backgrounds, to place in the scene, gives us free rein to select the ideal colour, intensity and complexity of what appears behind the main area of interest.