Prompts - The background in the image

The background in an image is important. Sometimes the background can say as much about the person as their clothing and their facial expressions, it's often a part of the narrative of the image.

Back in 1988 when I was studying photography I was interested in Stock Photography and I read a book (Title and author I can't recall) on the subject. One of the most Important things I learned from the book and still use today was a formula that can be used when you're shooting images for picture editors with the intention of securing sales. The formula - which I still teach is...

Person + background + involvement + symbol = picture

All of the components are important, but the background element is very important.

For example have a look at this image here of my son...

You're told "Go and take a picture of the 14 year old kid that took six wickets for 15 runs in an adults cricket match". You come round my house, you look around and you see this wall and you shoot this...

If we examine the image and start deconstructing it what can we see and what can we start making assumptions about if we analyse it? (See prompts in the side bar).
We're concerned with the background at the moment, but we can't ignore the rest of the image. What can we see...

• He's a white westerner.
• From the clothes and the haircut we can see that he's not destitute and that he's possibly either working class or middle class.
• He's fairly tanned and the environment looks warm, so he probably lives in a temperate area of the world or warmer.

But can we say anything about the background? Well it's kind of fairly neutral as it's breeze block. Breeze block would be usually associated with basic forms of architecture, in my own experience - social/council housing as opposed to private estates or anything 'posh'. Looking closer there's no designer labels and he's wearing grey track-suit bottoms which kind of reinforce the 'Working class' assumption. But, there's nothing in this image that tells the cricket story, even though it is the kid in the story.

This image represents an improvement in that there's some visual clues although they're a little esoteric the style and colour of the shirt and the inclusion of the Slazenger brand name and logo indicates an association with a sport. If you have some knowledge of sport you might be able to recognise the kit as being related to cricket and the image combined with the text now makes a little more sense, but the plain wall doesn't.

This is the image your picture editor would liked for you to come back with if you couldn't get an action shot (Or a smiley version). The background in this image albeit still fairly esoteric would be recognisable immediately when combined with the text relating to story "14 year old boy takes 6 wickets for 15 in an adult crickets match" because of the detail on the background - the grass and the pavilion. The ball though is probably the clincher to the narrative as it's the 'Symbol'.

Could it have been improved even more? Could the background have been even more 'Crickety'?...

Something like this?

This image uses the formula mentioned earlier...

Person + background + involvement + symbol = picture.

Backgrounds therefore are important as they are integral to creating the narrative. You can simplify them and then make the narrative ambiguous.

Simple backgrounds e.g. a solid colour or black and white still have connotations that can be read and made sense of. Alternatively a simple background focuses the attention on the subject and in many instances the inclusion of the simple white, grey or black background is of little significance. But these colours can also be made sense of in complex ways -

White http://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-white/
Grey http://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-grey/
Black http://www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-black/

Reducing files sizes for blogging.

Using pictures on your blog

 One of the things you simply must do is use images on your blog. Your blog must be full of your images.

 All of your projects should be made up of a number of developmental stages, test shoots, trials and evidence of trying things out, all of this work needs to be on the blog along with the associated reflective work (Gibbs).

 To make using images on blogger easier, you need to reduce the file sizes before uploading them.

 Copy the images that you’re going to upload and paste them into a designated folder used for this purpose “Small blog files”.

Once in there, reduce the files using Photoshop or similar. I tend to use Microsoft Picture Manager/Microsoft office, here's how...

 

Click on one of the images once you're in the folder and right click it. Select "Open with" and then Microsoft office.

In the top left-hand corner of this screen (Below) there are 3 square icons, click the one right at the edge of the page (Furthest left).

You'll then be presented with this screen here (below). With the image you selected highlighted +  the rest of the images in the folder. In the menu bar to the left select 'Edit' and choose 'Select all'.

 All of the images will then be highlighted. Then choose 'Picture' from the menu bar and then select 'Edit'. You will then be presented with another drop down box on the right-hand side. Choose 'Resize' and then 'Pre-defined' and then 'Web page large' and then click 'Ok' at the bottom.

 

 

 Finally go up to the top left hand side of the menu bar and click 'Save'. The images will then be reduced to a small size ready for your upload. The only thing you might want to do then is rename them in the order that you want them to appear in your blog. I think if you rename them 001, 002 and so on they will be automatically placed in the blog in that order.

The only other thing you might want to use this for is to make a quick contact sheet. At the first stage when you open the images in Microsoft office, you'll see in the menu bar 85%, you can type in the size you want and it'll change the view enabling you to see your images larger and smaller as a collective. Once it looks nice and tidy you can print screen and paste into Microsoft paint. Once in there click paste and then crop the edges of the picture away to make an easy to do contact sheet. Don't forget to save as a JPEG and it'll do so at a small usable size.