Black Background

I know that you really like my black background photos and a I've been receiving a lot of questions about it....so I decided to write my first article about how to create a dramatic image with a black background without going to a studio. The first thing you should do, which is very obvious if you think about it, is finding the black background for the scene you are shooting. For example, my baby gorilla photos were all taken when the baby was carried by his mother. Since Mama gorilla is black you can get a nice effect. This is not the traditional black background but you get the idea.

One of the most frustrating situation for a photographer is watching a wonderful scene with very little light. You can't focus, the ISO is high so you know the photo will come out grainy and...you can't focus. Some of my best photos were taken on a very low light and I hardly ever use flash. If you shoot RAW you should try to shoot RAW + JPEG and don't forget to set your aperture to the widest aperture possible in order to get the background blurry and limit your ISO to ~1600. The black background will reveal itself once you start shoot JPEG and with that you can find your best angle for the shoot.

Water can be a perfect black background under the right light. I used water to get the black background for the flamingo. Shadows can also do the trick. At the zoo we tend to ignore animals behind bars and under low light but this can be your perfect shoot. After taking the shoot you can adjust the contrast and watch the background turning black and your object popping out.

If it is a sunny day and you don't have enough shadows it is probably not the best situation for taking a black background photo, try to do something else.... Maybe a light background photo?