ABSTRACT
Artificial Backgrounds I prefer to photograph subjects in the eld against their own natural backgrounds, where the light falling on the subject and the background are usually the same. Some photographers choose to create their own, both for the studio and outdoors. is is accomplished either by spraying dierent coloured paints onto a sti card to replicate out-of-focus foliage or photographing vegetation by deliberately blurring it and then printing the result out on an inkjet printer. You can often tell the dierence since the light often appears dissimilar on the arti cial background when compared to natural foliage. Vegetation varies considerably in colour and shade; there are dierences in the absorption of light. On a bright day, you can also get shadows appearing on the background, which detracts from the picture. ere can be reectance issues depending on how they are situated. It was also common practice in the studio in the past to photograph subjects against plain backgrounds, but this approach is very outdated now, and I don’t recommend it. ere is a greater emphasis now on photographing subjects behaving naturally in their own environments.
