Your Background

<p>I say "your" background because the background in your photographs is 100% of your creation. It was not "background" until you made it so. [Note that I mean 'background' as everything that is not what one sees as the 'player(s)' in the picture; this will include stuff at any distance.]</p>

<p>Backgrounds are integral to how a picture works. As a very simple example, look at the <a href="/photo-of-the-week-discussion-forum/00c4Wq?start=0">recent Photo of the Week</a>, which is a stylish woman against a stone wall. The picture happens in the relationship of those two things; the stone makes the woman more woman-ish and the woman makes the stone more stony ... which then makes the woman even more woman-ish which then makes the stone even more stony, etc. Resonance.</p>

<p>As more complicated examples, and ones that I find fascinating, see the work of Diane Arbus. For example, <a href="https://caitlincraft505.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/d5051864x.jpg"><em>Teenage Couple on Hudson Street</em></a> (this is a terrible, flat reproduction; it should be much more tonally rich with the white being much stronger). Aside from the effect of the angled doorline (with black interior) on the rear left and the texture/tone of the wall, look at that Kleenex (or napkin) that's nearly on center. Look at the work that that trash does to authenticate ("this is <em>real</em>, not contrived"), to show spontaneity, and also to add the perfect dash of spice to the picture. Or look at her famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Childwithhandgrenadedianearbus.jpg"><em>Child with Toy Grenade</em></a> -- look at the details of the background, from the blurry figure growing out of his head to the baby carriage pushing people, to the central tree, to the horizontal line in the near-fore on the sidewalk.</p>

<p>Compare that to Avedon with his deliberately white empty, <em>empty</em> background. He is deliberately stopping the resonance. He's putting his hand on the bell and saying <em>only</em> THIS. Period. No mixing, no diminishment of the subject in service of relationships extraneous to it. It's like sticking a sample in a sterile petri dish so you can see exactly what one thing is exclusive of contamination. Or putting it under a (anti) bell-jar.</p>

<p>On the other hand, there is really no background in Ansel Adams's landscapes (or even in much of his closer work, either). Rather than adding to the complexity of the pictures, to me, this makes for a more homogeneous effect, but I'll leave it to you to think about how his all-over even-handedness (either everything is important or nothing is ... ) affects his pictures.</p>

<p>My interest (obsession) with backgrounds is because I'm a compositor. Compositing is about relationships (think about it; the only reason to composite is to rearrange; the "things" don't change, only their position does). Backgrounds, the buzz between all the stuff in a picture is where relationships happen.</p>

<p>[<strong>Those who are allergic to theory/philosophy, do not read the following!</strong> Relationships are external to the terms and can be carried to the extreme where the terms disappear and the relationship persists. Relationships are also (some believe) constitutive, i.e. the arrow runs, not from terms to relationship, but from relationship, this "thing between" back to the terms (the relationship *makes* the terms).]</p>

<p>Here I should ask some pointed question about your own experience with backgrounds, but I have noticed (ahem ... ) that such questions are pretty much ignored, so make up your own. I would, in any event, be really interested in how much attention you pay to background when making photos. I'd also like to know how the heck really good photographers manage to have octopus eyes that can sense, on the fly, when all those bits of flotsam and jetsam are so perfectly arranged. I do it painfully slowly (crawling around for hours picking out bits of stuff from the dirt when gathering bird-backgrounds).</p>

<p>Excellent subject. I looked quickly at a short list of my photos and found that in those cases the background and the foreground were almost one, that is where one stopped and the other started (or prevented a different subject matter) was difficult to assess. I should look more deeply at other photos, but perhaps this one is an example, where the tired walker on an inclined street is seen against a building background of sharply defined shadows that seem to come down on her and accentuate her weariness. The best I can do at present, but perhaps other photos, like the second one, may provide backgrounds that interact in a synergistic or contrasting way with the foreground.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/11472738</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/11472734</p>

<p>Julie, are you familiar with the German term, Gestalt? It's a somewhat parallel way of thinking, from another discipline. A clinician I knew liked to remind his students to seek an understanding of one's background or "field" of life events as an essential part of one's presenting behaviors. In my photo below the cloud form in the background seems to almost overwhelm the foreground cord walk that is in need of repair or extension.</p><div></div>

<p><br />I think the normal (i.e. non-photographer) person tends to focus on his or her point of interest and ignore the background, which is why most snapshots are, well, just snapshots. One of the first lessons I learned, the hard way, of course, was the importance of making the background either work for the shot or, at least, not detract from it. I think it's especially important in landscapes. In this shot, for example, the background actually makes it work, giving the scene much more drama than it would otherwise have:</p>

<p><a href="/photo/11241733">http://www.photo.net/photo/11241733</a></p>

<p>But, with other subjects, old barns, for instance (my favorite thing in life), I've found, like Arthur, the subject and the background are often merged and tend to enhance each other - the resonance that Julie refers to.</p>

<p><a href="/photo/12695859">http://www.photo.net/photo/12695859</a></p>

<p>Does any of this fit into gestalt theory? From what little I remember from Psych 101, possibly...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Background can be something against which the subject is seen and also something within which the subject is found. It can be environmental. I often feel it as space. A background can suggest a propositional or non-propositional narrative or story. These were taken the same day. The backgrounds we used and the background lighting changed from our initial discomfort (which I don't always try to avoid in making portraits) to the comfort we felt after a few hours together. Gerald, as most people, has very different sides to him and the backgrounds help show that. In the case of the color photo, the background of the photo relates to Gerald's ethnic background as well as being, importantly to me as photographer, his personal space.</p><div></div>

<p>Foreground can be used as well. It can be especially effective in making me feel isolation.</p><div></div>

<p>Fred, love the Paramount image. Beautiful environment skillfully handled. <br>

Backgrounds, I've always taught find the background first - a slight move on location can alter the background/subject relationship - not a Tao concept - just common sense. Environmental portraits/subjects present significant challenges - but we are responsible for the totality of the entire image. We must previsualize (as closely as we can) the finished image. That's the truth of the craft - from Bresson to LaChapelle and everywhere in between.</p>

<p>Julie, I'm a composite photographer as are you, where you strive for realism I disregard it and search for visual harmony - if it fails to look "believable" I could care less. In answer to your question, I probably spend half my time thinking about finding and executing backgrounds.</p>

<p>I've attached some work to exemplify these ideas - some are complete and others are waiting for the subject to arrive. LOL</p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17566475-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="460" /></p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17566477-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="453" /></p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17566480-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="454" /> </p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17566478-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="454" /></p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17566482-md.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="454" /></p>

 

<p>There are also instances where the subject <strong><em>is</em></strong> the background:</p>

<p><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/2678614-lg.jpg" alt="" width="532" height="800" /></p>

>>> I would, in any event, be really interested in how much attention you pay to background when making

photos.<P>

 

I pay a lot of attention; whether for street candids or portraits. Background (and foreground) complete the

message (or can be the message). In concert with a subject and light background can help suggest context, clarity, ambiguity, mystery, humor, sadness, focus attention (or not), conjure narrative to the viewer and on and

on. Many times, it's the sauce that holds everything together. <P>

 

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<p>These are really good examples and comments. Much to think about. I'll have more in the morning, but I wanted to say that 'gestalt' is very relevant -- thanks for bringing that up. And, to Michael Chang, your description 'The subject is the background,' is how I think of Eggleston (whom I suspect may not be your favorite photographer -- I hope you don't mind). His background <em>is</em> his foreground, but he doesn't tell us that (he just sneaks into our head by feeding us some 'foreground-ish' looking things that enrage those who expect the 'foreground' to make sense all by itself).<br>

If you can, try, in your mind taking these pictures apart and looking at them in pieces (kill the relationship). The background alone is sort of like if you've ever heard just the ground-base being played from an orchestral piece. It sounds very strange; yet it is the bones on which the piece is built.</p>

<p>I just realized, after saying what I did about Eggleston in my comment, above, that I think of 'color' as background (in the sense that it wants to work on me subliminally). Would you agree with that? If not, how do you think of 'color'?</p>

<p>Excellent post ,Julie.<br>

Colour or B/W. </p><div></div>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>Colour/ BW depends on what works....</p>

<p>What do you think?</p>

<p>The old masters were great.</p>

<p>But, should we be stuck in some old time continuum.</p>

<p>Someone alive......</p>

<p>And to my mind......well. look at the work and decide.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.citysnaps.net/">http://www.citysnaps.net/</a></p>

<p>Background is also the entirety of art, our traditions, ideas, and associations present in the creation of a photograph and its viewing. So there is also a question there about how our frame of references that is our background participates in our selection of visual elements ultimately present in the frame. I can't help but look at Child With Toy Grenade without wanting to emulate it.</p>

<p>I've been working with green screen lately. Gives ultimate choice with backgrounds. I'm doing a shoot this week, portraits of a movie production crew, and am going to put them in front of their home on Google maps. Always interesting things that can be done...</p>

<p>Does mass make gravity, or does gravity make mass?<br>

Do electrons/positrons make charge, or does charge make electrons/positrons?<br>

Do persons make culture, or does culture make persons?</p>

<p>In the 1910-20s, Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov demonstrated something that's come to be called by his name:<br>

.</p>

 

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<p>"Kuleshov edited together a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the plate of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief or desire, respectively. The footage of Mosjoukine was actually the same shot each time." -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect"><em>from Wikipedia</em></a></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.<br>

People were fascinated, dumbfounded, amazed! Hitchcock used it extensively in his films -- as did every maker of video commercials and, now, every film made by every-YouTube-body anywhere. We're so used to it that we probably think in Kuleshov montage.</p>

<p>To me, the Kuleshov effect demonstrates how backward is our intellectual (but not intuitive -- the intuition got it right) belief in how we treat the visual. It's as if the parts (the face, the soup, the girl in the coffin) are pieces in a chess game. Their "moves" are baked in. We move them around and expect those moves to remain, as in a chess-piece, fixed. That's not the way an open system (the real world, as opposed to a game), works. The street makes the man and the man makes the street. Culture isn't just for macro/population considerations; it's the force, the charge that creates <em>and is created</em> at the micro level (there are no levels ... ). Montage is an entirely unnatural happening. There is no "real" instance of a discrete face (piece). There is only a face/soup event and a face/girl-in-coffin event or man/street event. Take the man out of the street and neither man nor street is the same.</p>

<p>It's not even that, as Brad- says above, "it's the sauce that holds everything together"; background and player(s) are co-creative of one another. They do not exist absent each other (and I would claim that this constantly generates the new, not just rearranges the existent, but I won't go there today ... ). That we intellectually think the player is autonomous is our intellectual mistake (though, I repeat, the Kuleshov effect shows that the intuition is *trying* to get it right].</p>

<p>Complicating what is already very complicated (imagine a chess game where the possible allowed moves of all the pieces changed every time any other piece was moved -- and the configuration of the board was likewise fluid ... ) is that my culture is not your culture. For example, here is Bruce Davidson responding to those who complained that his East 100th Street [East Harlem, 1960s] photographs made poverty "beautiful":</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"He notes that when he lent cameras to some of the local residents, they "don't photograph the slums. They photograph their friends ... all sorts of possibilities, without sentimentality. They photograph the life they know, not its horrors." And it was not uncommon for Davidson to see his own "beautiful" photographs hanging on the walls of the homes of people he had pictured [he gave away a lot of prints]. His photographs neither glorify the neighborhood nor dwell on its very social problems -- though its scars and pain are evident. Instead, by simultaneously acknowledging and collaborating across the socio-racial divide that inevitably separated him from the residents of this community, he produced a photographic record of a place thick with texture, individuality, and dignity." -- <em>from</em> Reading Magnum <em>essay by Steven Hoelscher</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.<br>

I think that cultural "angle" shows up in the setting (background) given to the foreground content of his project.</p>

<p>And then there's Avedon. He wants to see the mass without its gravity. Close the system. Here's his own description of why he uses the white background:</p>

<p>.</p>

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<p>"As one who is addicted to white background, it seems odd to me that a gray or tonal background is never described as an empty background. But in a sense, that's correct. A dark background fills. A white background empties. A gray background does seem to refer to something -- sky, a wall, some atmosphere of comfort and reassurance -- that a white background doesn't permit. With the tonal background, you're allowed the romance of a face coming out of the dark. I don't think you find portraits with white backgrounds before [Egon] Schiele, except the ikons of Novgorod. ... It's so hard with a white background not to let the graphic element take over. It's so hard to give emotional content to something so completely and potentially caricatural, dominated by that yard, unyielding edge. And that, of course, is the challenge and importance of it. If you can make it work successfully, a white background permits people to become symbolic of themselves." -- <em>from</em> Evidence <em>[thank you Jeff Spirer for mentioning this book in another thread; it's very good and can be had for next to nothing on Amazon Marketplace (I got a new copy for $15)]</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.<br>

I'll resist the urge to comment on that, even though it seriously provokes me (in a good way; it's really interesting, I think).</p>

<p>Last, just for fun, think about the ground-breaking image, Earthrise (Earth seen from space). How seeing "us" on a background of the great void affects our conception of Earth.</p>

<p>Gary, thanks!</p>

<p>I like your idea of harmony. The lack of believability, when it occurs, might also produce a sort of tension, even a cacophony that can be effective. In your first photo, I feel a sort of counterpoint between the man being in his space and not being in his space. I like that.</p>

<p>Also, considering background, and looking at your own photos as well, <em>influence</em> seems important. The influence of the blue tones of the pillars on the light on the young man's face and the hues in the shadows on his shirt. The influence of the formality of those pillars on how graphic and almost monumental appear the man's fingers.</p>

<p>I think about how influenced I am by backgrounds (especially their colors and tints) when I'm post processing my portraits. So the background acts on my aesthetic approach. It is an active player in many ways. The background often tells me in what direction to go.</p>

<p>Obviously such influence extends to my personal background, which is the precursor to so many of my choices and ways of seeing.</p>

<p>______________________________________</p>

<p>Howard, nice description of your photo, where the swirling sky does seem to overwhelm the walkway. Your photo, to me, exemplifies the fact that backgrounds are not static and they function as they interrelate with other aspects and elements of the photo. It's in large part because of your angle and perspective of shooting that the background becomes so all-powerful. A less perspectival and deliberate approach to this photo might have created a very different sense of atmosphere, power relationships, and subject orientation.</p>

<p><em>"Colour/ BW depends on what works....</em><br /> <em>What do you think?"</em></p>

<p>I think the shadow on the woman's face is much more graphic and harsh in the b/w version. It's a blocked-up shadow. It feels more organic in the color version, where I sense texture and some sense of light. The woman stands out more in the color version, especially noting the way her legs separate from the planter behind her in the color photo. The kid's red sneakers provide just a little punctuation mark which doesn't occur in the b/w version.</p>

<p>To me, this isn't a matter of color vs. black and white <em>per se</em> or whether we think of color as background as much as it's a matter of the conversion. The b/w version, IMO, could have offered something very different with a different approach to conversion. It could have captured more of the color version did. It may also be that one would see potential in the black and white to be more graphic and less organic than the color version, almost like film noir, but overall I don't see the black and white achieving that either in this case.</p>

<p>What I do think is that the blue of the wall has a profound visual effect which will never be the same in the b/w version, though, again, the blue could be exploited in the conversion to achieve more of a visual/emotional impact. In this case, I think the blue was actually handled quite well in the conversion, so if the other tonalities were worked with, the wall could achieve such impact, if desired of course, and there could be reasons why that impact might not be desired in one's b/w vision.</p>

<p>I agree with you, Allen, that ultimately we look at the work and decide, but which we respond to won't necessarily depend on "this is black and white" and "this is color." It will depend on what's seen and what's brought out in each.</p>

<p>In candid, impromptu photos of people I tend to forget about backgrounds - much to my dismay when I later realize a potentially good photo was compromised by background distractions.</p>

<p>But most of my nighttime photos, especially around my neighborhood, are deliberately about the background. The photos often include people. But these aren't photos of people, or any particular social commentary. They're actually self portraits, reflections of my own state of mind during those insomnia-driven late night walks. Occasionally I'll chat with those folks and take candid portraits, and the results are nothing at all like my insomnia project.</p>

<p>On a couple of occasions, when folks have asked why I snapped their photos from afar, they were actually interested in hearing my explanation about including them as part of a tableaux and commentary on our perceptions of isolation and alienation. Usually they smile and nod because it's a shared experience. If they're out late at night, alone, it's often because they're feeling the same way I do.</p>

<hr /><center>*<a href="/photo/17485662&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17485662-md.jpg" alt="Walk-in shadows" width="680" height="680" border="0" /></a></center><hr /><center>*<a href="/photo/16853952&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16853952-md.jpg" alt="How to make a perfectly mundane beer run seem ominous." width="680" height="680" border="0" /></a></center><hr /><center>*<a href="/photo/16918492&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/16918492-md.jpg" alt="Something..." width="509" height="680" border="0" /></a></center><hr /><center>*<a href="/photo/17079032&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17079032-md.jpg" alt="Ghosts of comets missed." width="680" height="455" border="0" /></a></center><hr /><center><br />

<p>*<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17485196-lg.jpg" alt="Shadow tag" width="525" height="700" border="0" /><br /> Same wall, my shadow</p>

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<p>Lex, something I've always thought about your work in particular and many good photos is that the photo is the subject. What is often revealed is the photographer or some relatable expressive gesture with which a viewer can empathize. The subject of a photo often is not the "main thing" on view.</p>

<p>Lex, I love those pictures. But ... (heh!) to my mind, "background" is what consciousness finds to be <em>excess</em>. It's what overflows the scope of attention. It <em>is</em> perceived; it is <em>not</em> allowed entry into consciousness. (This is a feature, not a bug of our intellect ... The world is large and one is small.) More on this at the end of the post, but because it's theory-heavy, I'm putting it last. Tangentially, it's interesting to think about how the night de-materializes one's own sense of body.</p>

<p>Leaving Lex, for the moment, I wanted to think about kinds of pictures that have the least background. In order of background-less-ness:</p>

<p>1. Still life<br /> 2. Portraits<br /> 3. Nudes</p>

<p>A picture without "background" is a picture that is fully culturally coded. There's nothing there that is excess, that overflows our (conscious) attention. In the case of nudes, however, its more interesting. The nature of the background, including what is *not* there is very, very, very affective to the viewer. It is the "permission" in that it tells the viewer whether this is Art, religious imagery, sexual exploration, or pornography. Every little detail is code for what this body is "doing" and how/whether we want to look at it. And yet I think one rarely has any awareness of having noticed the (often seemingly trivial) details of the background of a nude.</p>

<p>Against that, the exception proves the rule. Friedlander. He photographs nudes the same way he photographs everything else. Because he is frankly curious. His nudes are given wherever they fell out of the tree, by which I mean they're sitting or lying on whatever was handy in their own homes. His backgrounds are full of all the usual junk of daily living -- books, furniture, electrical cords, chair legs, randomly patterned bedspreads and furniture covers, light switches. It is really disconcerting. This is a case where I am forced to notice the background -- the background becomes foreground -- because it doesn't do what it's expected to do, which is "give permission" or to use my phrase from an earlier post, to co-create the foreground. These "nudes" refuse to stop being "people" -- they're not detached, taken out of, the real. As Ingrid Sischy writes in the essay that is in <em>Lee Friedlander: Nudes</em>, "Over and over he says the one thing he cared about when he did the photographs was that they feel 'real.' " Real = with a background (an excess, an overflow).</p>

<p>**********************<br /> <strong>WARNING</strong>: the rest is theory-laden. Not required reading for those who hate this kind of stuff.</p>

<p>William James wrote that what prevents the creation of truth are the truths we think we already possess (the pragmatists way of saying that truth is local). Combine that with Henri Bergson: "Our representation of matter is the measure of our possible action upon bodies: it results from the discarding of what has no interest for our needs, or more generally for our functions. ... [O]ur consciousness only attains to certain parts and to certain aspects of those parts. Consciousness -- in regard to external perception -- lies in just this choice. ... it is ... discernment." Further from Bergson: "What you have to explain then, is not how perception arises, but how it is limited, since it should be the image of the whole, and is in fact reduced to the image of that which interests you."</p>

<p>Note that James is not saying that the new truth falsifies the previous truth; this is not a zero sum game. He only says that it prevents or gets in the way. Likewise, Bergson does not say that what we are conscious of is all that we perceive; quite the contrary. Bergson maintains that we perceive everything. However, it is the job (the necessary job) of consciousness to filter that input, to allow only what is relevant to potential action or being acted upon.</p>

<p>Which -- finally! -- brings me back to the subject of background / foreground. Foreground is that of which we are conscious, i.e. that which has the potential to be acted on or to act upon us. Background is whatever is in excess of that, what overflows that measure. But, taking James's statement into account, it is also what stands between (prevents) our getting beyond what we expect. Which means that one could either use a photograph to bring the background to the fore (Friedlander) in a way that disturbs/expands what was expected. Or, because background escapes consciousness, one can deliberately play with its formative powers to transform the foreground subliminally (Kuleshov, again).</p>

<p>Or, if as in Lex's pictures, we are given an act-less (in Bergson's sense) scene that therefore doesn't separate fore from back, consciousness lets us play with what would otherwise (necessarily) be filtered out.</p>

And there are foregrounds as well... <P>

 

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Digging that set, Lex... <P>

<p>I like backgrounds, but my photos are inspired predominantly by coffee grounds.</p><div></div>

<p>Damn it, Julie, stop making me think about s**t!</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Julie H:<br>

Does mass make gravity, or does gravity make mass?<br />Do electrons/positrons make charge, or does charge make electrons/positrons?<br />Do persons make culture, or does culture make persons?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, yes, and yes. Wave/particle duality, mass/gravity duality, persons/culture duality, etc.</p>

<p>As to the original questions regarding backgrounds: I am a photographic Neanderthal and sadly give little thought to the importance of backgrounds. (I love some of the examples you have given, which cause me to view Eggleston, Freidlander, etc., from a slightly different vantage point. Also, the notion of color as being a background is interesting to me.) Since 90% of what I have shot over the last few years falls roughly into the category of street photography, I don’t spend a whole lot of time concerning myself with background. If/when I do, it is simplistic and ham-fisted in comparison to the type of subtle background usage and consciousness you ascribe to Eggleston. “I want to head in a easterly direction down Randolph because of the way the light is falling at this time of day.” Or, “I want to photograph from position ‘X’ because that will place the Wrigley Building, or the El tracks, or the Chicago River, in the background. </p>

<p>Paradoxically, background is of utmost importance to me because one of my primary goals is to transmit to a viewer some of the same feelings of urban atmosphere, energy, theatricality and surrealism that I receive when I walk down the streets of Chicago. That vibe is simply not there without that background. And it is paramount to me not only as a photographer, but also as a viewer. In fact, it was <em>Steve Gubin the viewer who derived certain feelings from other photographer’s work</em> who created <em>Steve Gubin the photographer who seeks to transmit some of those feelings from his own environment</em>. I recently picked up a book called “Paris Mon Amour”. It is a collection of photographs from different eras and different photographers. The best of them take me away to another place. Not just Paris, but another world, another reality of different stories and sensations. This may sound corny, but I can be moved to tears by a book, or in a gallery, when I come across photos that transport me to a different time, place, and environment. It is like a good blues song to me. It hits me in the gut and makes me feel. And it doesn’t exist without background. Avedon makes me think and wonder, but he does not make me feel, or at least not in the same way as I have described. Nothing good or bad about it, that’s just the way I am at this point in time.</p>

<p>I do a lot less portraiture or street portraiture than Fred or Brad (and the care that they take with their backgrounds is evident in each) but I try to be aware of background when I do. As I said, my awareness and use of background is pretty crude and basically comes down to “avoid merges, and try to show the environment the person is in.” </p>

<p>I’ll provide two examples below (I may have shared one in another thread on PN, I can't remember) -- This was a fellow named Josiah. I was walking through The Loop a few weeks ago and some of the street s were closed off for the filming of “Transformers 4”. Josiah is an aspiring filmmaker who was working on the movie set. He helped tell us where to detour to go around the set, and also told us where the best vantage point would be to get photos of the set. We struck up a conversation and I asked if I could take his photo. He was against a building and I asked him to shift slightly toward the corner so that I could get both him, but also part of the street and the El tracks in the background. That was about as deep as my thought process on background went that day. </p><div></div>