Portraiture | Simplify | Watch The Background

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. ( Wikipedia )

When shooting portrait, I like to keep my background simple, less distraction so the viewers can concentrate on my subject without any distraction. In this case like the picture above, I did not have much choice, I mean I can’t ask the child to move here and there simply because he was quite shy and doesn’t speak a words, and I was lucky because he was stand still watching me and my friend taking picture of his friend. Maybe he is curios to know what I’m doing here, they are not quite familiar with the photographers since this place is not a tourist attraction. It is just a small village.

While taking his picture I did communicate with him, I don’t know whether he understand me or not but I think he does, peoples here does speak my language, Bahasa Malaysia language, our National Language. I choose to shoot from a higher angle, not from his eye level simply because I want a clean background, if I were to shoot him from his eye level, there were many distraction in the background so I choose the ground as my background and with his skin tone, I think it blend well with the ground or the soil.

For me a background can make or break a photograph, when shooting for portrait, it is good to have a contrasting background, choose your background carefully so your main subject will stand out from the background. In this case I have to choose the right angle carefully to minimize the distraction since I cannot direct or position the child to another place. The child is standing in front of me and it is up for me to choose the best possible angle to make him stand out from the background and I choose to shoot from a higher angle and make the ground or the soil as the background.

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