Now let's talk about studio background. Now dark backgrounds, blacks and downgrades tend to work very well for corporate and for men. These are not hard and fast rules. These are just guidelines for you. white backgrounds seem to work well for family shots. Use colored backgrounds with caution.

Why do I say that you don't want a color that's stronger than the subject, because then the eye is going to be drawn to the background. And we want to try and avoid that we want to highlight and bring attention to the subject as much as possible. Now you can see these very textured backgrounds and they're very much out of fashion. Now, I'm not talking about environmental texture, but I'm talking about Gray's with a wash and a sort of a sort of faded look or patterns all they're not really that fashionable and portraiture at the moment. What is fashionable is simple block colors. Whites like blacks, whites, gray, And also you'll see a lot of environmental portraiture.

So bear that in mind. Obviously, everyone has their own style. And if you feel this is suitable for your client audience, then please use whatever type of background you prefer. But this is just a guidance when it comes to portraiture, and what the current sort of trends are. So let's just have a look at some examples of how these work together. Now this is a portrait is a corporate portrait.

So we've got black you can see we've got a rim light coming over the shoulder and lighting the hair and lighting the shoulder we've got our main light which is above the subject and that is a strong open loop. So it's a very wide open loop and and you'll understand what we're talking about when we come to that section. And very light fill on the other side of the of the face because I wanted a beauty shop because it's a woman I wanted just to highlight light of the cheeks and just create a bit of shadow and the cheekbones. But that's a black background portray. So this is a child on white, and it conveys innocence. It conveys purity.

And that can be very strong for children. So that's how it can work. In this instance, we've come for very simple main, with strong Phil. lighting setup. So that isn't a huge amount of shadows on the face, but we wanted it soft and even because she's a child. Again, we have a family shot.

And you can see we've gone on white here and we want a bit of action because it's family and it's the dad and the boy and we wanted them playing together. And then we basically took those images in Photoshop and created one image out of them. But you can see again with family shots at the moment, why is very powerful because it isolates the subject, and your eyes are drawn to their faces and the interaction and the energy. Now here's an exception to the rule was this. We wanted to create Cake character. So we've actually reversed the role This is a family portray, because they're a little bit more mature.

We've gone for a black background, the gray hairs gonna jump forward. And I just wanted to show you this because what I'm saying is these are guidelines but use your imagination use your discretion. In this instance, the black background was stronger, especially when I created a black and white. But again, notice a simple plain background a simple color really makes a subject pop out.