Isolate your subject

Let me assume that the problem is sufficiently clear at this moment and the question becomes one of how do you correct it and isolate your subject? There are several steps you can take, all of which are better than the clone tool in Photoshop, which I consider cheating:

•  move your butt; get closer and/or shift to frame your subject in a  way that eliminates the distraction

•  eliminate any overlay – of objects and tones – so your subject is  set off a bit

•  control your depth of field

•  correct the lighting on the subject – that may require waiting  around until the light changes

•  rearrange things – bend a branch, move an object

•  crop your photo

With a (posed) portrait or a still life it is fairly easy, but for a street shot or an architectural image it is often more difficult, sometimes even impossible and you realize you have to settle for less. In the image below the photographer was able to isolate her subject by opening the lens wide (f/4), which limited the depth of field. Objects that are not in sharp focus, unless they are bright, don't seem to intrude on our perception as much. Shortening the depth of field is a common way (actually overused) of isolating the subject when shooting portraits.


Below is an example where the photographer used several means of isolating an important element. The small tree in the distance is isolated physically from other objects, is much brighter than its background, and is framed by the backlit foliage in the foreground.

       
Sometimes isolating the subject is a meaningless or irrelevant act; the subject is the complexity—the edge-to-edge clutter of objects and shapes that are revealed as our eyes move around the image, each new discovery adding to the effect rather than distracting from it. But there remains, we suspect, some object that was the reason you stood where you did to begin with. Here's an example.
      The subject is not so much the church in the center of the photograph, although that is the reason I pointed my camera in that direction; the subject is the context of that 1860's church—the commerce, signs, poles, cars, wires, and everything else that is to be found in a modern urban cityscape. Has the subject been isolated? Definitely not; but it has been centered and it is one of the brightest objects in the scene. Moreover, the context in which it appears (a book on the eighteenth and nineteenth century religious architecture of New Jersey) leaves no doubt that the viewer ought to direct some attention to it.

We included this image because we did not want to leave the impression that the highest value in photography is a subject bereft of its context, standing alone against a blank wall or white backdrop. Of course we do that some times, as Irving Penn did with his magnificent portraits of Cuzco (Peru) peasants. Sometimes we isolate the person, the church, the plastic toy, and sometimes we show them in a meaningful context. That's why we call attention to how the photographer must think about what he/she is looking at, and not simply adjust the setting on his/her camera. 

Go to ACTIVITIES

No. 2 June 2006

Photography is not simply a craft
  or art, but a means of seeing and thinking about our world.

Although the right side of the door is a bit too bright, the principal subject is much brighter (as well as being centered) and so we have little difficulty knowing where to focus. The photographer chose to use the door to frame the table, and if he had moved in tighter we might have lost the sense of the frame.