Let's have a look at backgrounds. If we there's two types of background, if we're doing environmental portraits, that means we're not using a studio background, we're actually using the environment behind them as the background, we need to remember that a shallow depth of field will often work best. And we want to keep the environment in line with this story. So we use a background that tells us something about the portray about the subject that associates them. So we put them in a, in a situation that's familiar to them or is relevant to them. And we will try to communicate some of the background story with our background.

So let's have a look at some examples of that. In this portray, this is a corporate portrait we did for a client. It's very simple portrait, it's very natural, using sunlight, in coming through a large opening. So basically We use a window light technique. But what we're talking about here is the background. This was a processing center where they processed documents for clients.

So we needed to communicate that type of environment. So we use the background there was actually there. This was another company. And in this instance, our clients and they were working in a place that made polishes. Now, these polishes are handmade are very traditional. And we wanted to communicate that.

So we took the portraits in the background, we wanted to show them as the characters on the left, you've got the founder of the business and on the right, you've got a young man working in the business. And we just wanted to bring across the character. So using the environment using the background helped us to tell that story. Sometimes a background doesn't have to tell a story, it can just be a texture. So in this instance, we've got a really nice texture She's looking off she's not aware we're taking the picture. So we're taking a profile shot.

And the lighting on this is a full face lighting so it's coming down. We would obviously call it butterfly lighting as you'll see later on, but butterfly lighting with a profile side shot we'll explain that later as well. But the texture background gave as an interesting backdrop. And then in post processing we darkened the we put a very strong vignette on to take the texture out a lot of the picture. Obviously, the composition on this is a little bit unusual because we've gone into the last version of the picture. And if you're really interested in how to use composition, to really improve your photography, please check out our composition photography course and we'll show you all the rules that the master photographer sort of knew and followed and didn't follow it.

But they knew where they were there. So we can teach you that if you need some help there as well.