How to darken the background

Joined: 02 Nov 2006 Posts: 16

Hello friends

Recently I saw some images at exhibition in which they have managed to blackened the background. keeping main object in focus and its very clear. they claim theres no photoshop in it. can you guys tell how to achieve this.

And heres one example of the effect i want take a look at this photograph in following image. check the link.
http://www.phototakers.com/forum/ftopic71143.html (the photograph is not taken by me its what i found in this forum.)

Joined: 17 May 2006 Posts: 118 Location: Pacific N.W.

I can't tell you how it is done, but if you PM the person that posted that shot, he or she may be able to answer your question.

Joined: 21 Oct 2006 Posts: 350 Location: Ontario, Canada

The tiger was standing in much brighter light than the background - eg. open shade vs deep shadow.

The hummingbird in this picture, a test shot using EF 135L + EF 2 tc,
was in bright morning sun and the background was a distant pine woods in deep shade. The light to the lower right is from an out of focus flower and foliage in the mid-distant partially sun-lit background. I used my normal RAW workflow to process this image.

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 12:11 pm

First of all, pturton, that image rocks!

Next, prasad5, there are several ways to have a dark background from your subject. The most obvious way is the way pturton already mentioned where the scene already has a natural dark background. Also, remember that the camera sees contrast differently than the human eye so even if there does not appear to much of a difference in light from subject to background you may still be able to something dramatic because of the way the camera 'sees'.

Another way to do this would be if the background was a long ways from the subject in the foreground you could set aperture/shutter/ISO for an underexposure and use a flash to expose the subject properly and the light fall off from the flash beyond the subject would be such that the background would remain underexposed.