Festival photography

and the problem of bad backgrounds

One of the major highlights of a photo Rico. Obviously, the background ruins the tography tour, foreign or domestic, picture. Even though the wild outfit of the subis a festival. Whenever possible, I ject dominates the composition, the tourists in include them in my itineraries for the tours I the background and the markings on the road, lead. Wild costumes, great color, and dancplus the distant float, divert our eyes from the ers make amazing photographic material. The subject. It was not possible to blur the backproblem, though, is too often the backgrounds ground more than I did because I couldn’t have are distracting and unattractive. An otherwise used a longer lens. I took this shot at f/8, and great picture is ruined by unappealing eleeven had I opened the lens one or two f/stops, ments behind the subject. that wouldn’t have obscured the distracting eleA good example can be seen in the image bements enough to make this work. low. I took this during a Chrismtas parade (I Compare this photo with the composite on the know -- a little strange for Christmas) in Puernext page. All the problems have been solved

by adding the blur of color behind the subject. The background image comes from a 1/8th second exposure of colorfully dressed dancers in the same parade.

The key to saving problematic festival pictures and turning them into winning shots is to first, recognize the background is not ideal, second, take a photograph (or use an image from your files) that can replace the undesirable background, and third, develop the skills needed in Photoshop to make it happen.

Distracting elements

Distracting elements come in many forms, but the main things you are looking for are:

1. Other tourists

2. Poles, trees, buildings, etc. that have nothing to do with the festival and that present bold 3. Bright highlights. These draw attention away from the subject. They could be a bright sky or overexposed areas from mottled sunlight.

4. Signs, advertising placards, traffic, power lines and other city elements. These are always bothersome because they are simply unattractive and ruin the impact of the festival pictures.

In the background of the picture on the next page taken during the Jember Fashion Carnaval in Indonesia, the building, it’s bank sign, the street lamp posts, and the white sky are all distracting from an otherwise exciting shot. On page 7, you can see the difference when I replaced the entire background with well defined clouds. Note the diffused lighting on the scene and how the storm clouds would provide this kind of available light on the parade. When you replace backgrounds, the light always has

Preconceiving background images

The types of backgrounds that work behind festival images vary, of course, but I narrow them down to a few types of pictures that always work. They are:

1. A dramatic or beautiful sky 2. A blur of color 3. Color texture 4. Scenes of the festival that are sharp 5. Scenes of the festival that are blurred

As you shoot the festival, keep these things in mind. You’ll find that you will take pictures not typically on your creative radar, but these will give you a lot of composite options once you review your pictures from the festival. On the next page, you can see I replaced the unattractive background of power lines and ugly buildings with scenes of the Holi Festival in India. The portrait of the young woman shows she had already been splashed with color during the festival, but the original background was pretty bad.

Developing skills in Photoshop

To replace backgrounds in pictures taken during festivals, the tools most useful in Photoshop are the pen tool, the plugin Topaz Mask AI (for hair and feathers), the quick selection tool, and the lasso tool. In addition to using layers and layer masks, these tools allow you to make precise selections. Without precision, a new background won’t look real.

In addition to replacing the background, I like to eliminate road markings as well. In the original shot on the previous page, you can see

By replacing the background in this shot from the Holi Festival in India, I completely transformed the portrait. The picture on the left shows the woman outdoors in a street covered with power lines. In the picture on the right, she appears to be in the midst of the festival iteself.

I cloned out the white lane stripes and all the trash in the street. This makes for a perfect image without imperfections. §