You know how it goes, you compose a great shot but there are some 'nasty' highlights or whatever distracting the viewer from the subject.

So, before you press the shutter, how can you eliminate or reduce the impact of the distractions?

Among your options are to change your camera angle, shoot at your widest aperture, remove the distraction before shooting, remove it in PhotoShop, or as I like to do, darken the background. This can be done with a piece of dark cloth placed as far back as possible from the subject - a dark colored coat works too - or by casting a shadow on the busy background.

The latter method was used below for this pair of before and after samples. In image 1 the background has multiple light-colored distractions. So, before firing off image 2 I positioned my body such that I was casting a shadow behind the subject . . .

Image 1: Normal	Image 2: Shadow cast onto background
Teasel: Both images were exposed at 250th @ f.8

I assume that you can see that image 2 is the superior of the two, but had I somehow created a completely black background, it would have been really, really stunning!

Here are two more examples . . .

Image 3

Image 4

I thought the background of image 3 was colorful but a bit bland and lacking depth. So I changed my camera angle so that image 4 with a dark background and soft out of focus points of light beat the previous image into first place!

Remember that whatever you shoot, the final result is only limited by your imagination. Good shooting!

John Baker, Travel Images
All images and text are strictly copyrighted by John Baker Photographer LLC/Travel Images, 1990-2012. Permission in writing must be sought for any form of reproduction.

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