Background First

The great photographer Sam Abell (Nat Geo, Marlboro Man) used to quote his photographer dad:

“Sammy, start with the background.” 

It’s a puzzling bit of advice, until you see it in action. 

My own photography isn’t in the same galaxy of talent as Sam Abell, but I think I understand what his dad was saying, and I can show it with a few images I took on a recent Saturday morning at the Lincoln Memorial.

Here was the first shot I took of a young dancer, posing on the front portico of the Lincoln.

Not a great background. Now some would say you could clone out the distracting person on the far side of the portico, but that still wouldn’t leave you with much of an image. The background is too busy and the subject’s arms are stretched across two very different spaces.  So here was my next try.

A tiny bit better. At least the background behind the subject is simple: a set of receding marble columns. Again, someone could say, “Just crop out the trees and the sky.” You could do that, but it’s better, much better, to get the image right inside the camera first. (Another lesson from Sam Abell that I’m going to treat you to at the end of this blog post: All his photos are full frame, no cropping. He learned that from Henri Cartier-Bresson.) 

So I moved a step to my right and got this image:

And this:

See the difference from the first two shots?

“Start with the background, Sammy.”

See my two posts on “Finding a Stage” for more on this important concept of backgrounds first.

PS: An even better composition would have been if I’d gotten my camera down onto the floor, for a low-angle shot looking up.  (See my post “Go Low” for more.) That’s hindsight for you – it helps fuel the vow to do better next time. 

PPS: You can watch Sam Abell’s video “The Life of a Photograph” here. It’s long (1:49) and covers many subjects (including how he captured two memorable images that made National Geographic’s list of the 100 best of the 20th century), but a key one is about composing the background first. (Among other places in the video, he talks about this at the 25:00 mark.) 

Sam quotes his dad, who ran Sam’s  high school camera club in a small town in upstate Ohio, with other sage photographic wisdom, like: “Bad weather makes for good photographs.”

Warning: If you start watching it, you will find yourself in the grip of a gravitational force field that will not let you go until you emerge two hours later, inspired and thrilled by what a world-class photographer can teach in a short time.