The Pure Background
Text and images copyright Arthur Morris, all rights reserved.

Early in my career I saw some images by Tim Fitzharris and remember being tremendously impressed. Among my favorites were the classics, “Great Blue Heron with lettuce” and “White-winged Scoter pair.” My immediate reaction was, “I’ve got to learn to create pictures like that!” Reading the fine print, I learned that Tim had used a floating blind, so he was able to make the images at the bird’s-eye level. From that perspective, Tim’s foregrounds and backgrounds were simply soft blurs of color. And while for over two decades I have yet to spend a single minute in a floating blind, I have consistently been able to create the pure backgrounds that have become the hallmark of my BIRDS AS ART style. These clean, simple, uncluttered backgrounds of diffused color help to focus the viewer's eye on my favorite subject - beautiful birds. You can do the same. Whether you photograph flowers, large mammals, or tiny insects, learning to choose and use pure backgrounds can improve the artistic qualities of your images.

With this Bar-tailed Godwit standing atop a small hillock in Nome, Alaska, the background was far enough "away" from the bird that a pleasing blur resulted. Had he been standing on a flat area of tundra, the background grasses would have been clearly visible no matter how wide an aperture I might have chosen. I am constantly looking for situations with birds perched against distant backgrounds. In many cases you can "move" the background farther away simply by lowering your tripod. Canon 600mm f/4 L IS lens with the 2X II TC and the 1Ds. Fill flash at -1 stop in the rain.

My two favorite out-of-focus backdrops are green vegetation and still blue water, preferably lit by soft, early morning or late afternoon light. Many photographers believe that just the use of a super-telephoto lens at its wide-open aperture will produce pure backgrounds, but this is not always the case. The primary factor in producing a soft backdrop is the proximity of the background to the subject. If you are photographing a warbler just an inch or two in front of a wall of willow leaves, not even a wide aperture such as f/4 will yield a pleasingly de-focused background; the leaves will be fairly sharply defined because of their proximity to the subject. If, however, you are patient and fortunate enough to capture the bird as it pauses for just an instant on a bare branch with a wall of willow leaves two feet behind the bird’s perch, a lovely diffused background consisting of many soft shades of green will result. You can train yourself to search for such opportunities: a dragonfly sitting at the tip of a clean twig or a single blossom positioned away from the others. In these and similar situations, the relatively distant backdrops will help you produce dynamic images with pure, uncluttered backgrounds.

When photographing birds in or on the water, the background will almost always look best on windless mornings or evenings. When there is a breeze, or worse yet, a stiff wind, your photographs will depict every ripple and wavelet. To my eye, these features are often distracting. On clear, still mornings, the water may take on almost mystical qualities; a Roseate Spoonbill preening itself against a background of seamless powder-blue water at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge always leaves my heart racing. On calm, dreary days, try using fill-flash at –1 to transform the flat, gray, lifeless water into a lovely backdrop that shimmers like mercury.

I was at the home of a friend in Kentucky who had a great Blue Jay blind, but his set-up was beyond pathetic with too many ugly perches in all the wrong spots. A neighbor’s white fence and a bush with shiny leaves were just some of the distracting background elements. "Dr. Morris" went to work and re-did the whole thing. The results were spectacular; each perch was positioned so that a pleasing background was a given. Here, a distant tree ablaze with fall color was my choice. I left the teleconverters in my pocket for this one so that I could include lots of yellow in the frame. Canon 500mm f/4 L IS lens with Canon 1Ds body.

When working on mud flats, beaches, or grassy fields, my absolute favorite technique is to get down and dirty with a long lens. For years, I would simply take my big lens off the Wimberley head, place the foot of the lens - with the mounting plate still in place - in the sand or dirt, and make photographs from the bird’s-eye level. I now use a ground-pod with an Arca-Swiss-style clamp seated atop a lazy-Susan-type mechanism. This allows me to pan easily with birds that are walking slowly or foraging for food. When working on the ground, both the foreground and background elements will be rendered completely out-of-focus, and choosing a wide aperture will heighten that effect. The resulting images will feature razor sharp birds framed by suffused swatches of color, and they will have a decidedly intimate quality to them; an intimacy that cannot be achieved when you are making the picture while standing comfortably behind your tripod.

You will want to wear a shirt or sweatshirt with long sleeves and pockets, the former to protect your elbows (some photographers opt for both elbow and knee pads), and the latter so you can easily reach your extra film or compact flash cards and a blower brush. Be sure to clean the inside of your camera when changing film because grains of sand or grit will routinely find their way inside your camera body while you are crawling about on the ground. You will find it best to advance Marine-style while keeping your butt low to the ground. In this manner, not only will you produce lovely, soft backgrounds, but you will also be able to get closer to your free and wild subjects than you ever imagined possible. At times, you will get so close that you will need to mount an extension tube to allow for close focus! When photographing sandpipers in the mud at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge’s East Pond in Queens, New York, I was often able to crawl to within three feet of a sleeping young shorebird while photographing its more distant flock-mates.

Once you learn to recognize situations that allow you to create backgrounds of pure color, there are several things you can do to enhance this effect and to clean up your images. The first, of course, is to choose wide apertures like f/5.6, f/4, or even f/2.8 if that is an option. When you are tempted to stop down a bit, use the depth of field preview button to ensure that the background details are not brought up when you stop down. (Be sure to give your eye a few seconds to adjust to the darker viewfinder.) If you are working with California Brown Pelicans on the cliffs of La Jolla, for example - where the Pacific Ocean is hundreds of feet from your subject - you will be able to stop down considerably without seeing much background detail at all.

Make it a habit to check the frame edges to ensure that no sticks, leaves, or stones have crept into your carefully designed composition. At times, you can reframe to eliminate these distractions. (A camera body with a 100% viewfinder will help.) In the same vein, learn to carefully examine your pure background for unusually light or dark sections. The viewer’s eye will tend to be drawn to such areas, especially to the lighter, brighter portions of an image. It may be possible to change the juxtaposition of these light or dark areas by shifting your position left, right, up, or down. You might be able to hide a bright spot behind your subject or move a dark area just out of the frame, dramatically improving the artistic quality of an image.

Whether you enjoy photographing bugs or birds or bears or blossoms, be aware that the background can be just as important as the subject when it comes to the artistic and dramatic success of your images. If you choose your situations wisely, and take extreme care when designing your images, your backgrounds can and will add to the strength of your compositions rather than detracting from them. By learning to utilize pure background techniques, you can create graphically powerful images on a consistent basis.

Now, don't get me wrong, I rarely photograph captive birds, but I was in Costa Rica on a really bad trip and free and wild birds were few and far between. This toucan was sitting on a sort of half door/gate that opened into an outdoor enclosure where food was prepared. The background (a rusty sink, some wooden bowls, and a white cabinet) was about as horrific as you could ever have imagined, but the bird, especially its bill, was gorgeous. I was set up with the Canon 500mm f/4 L IS lens, the 1.4X II TC, a 25mm extension tube, and the 1Ds but saw no way of making a pleasing image. Then, the young man who prepared the bird's food entered the enclosure wearing a dark blue sweatshirt. Voila! Instant background, and he never even knew that I had made the images until I showed them to him on the laptop. I dialed in -1 stop of exposure compensation to prevent the dark, dark background from over-exposing the bright yellows.

Arthur Morris is a highly accomplished and inspirational photographer specializing in birds. His writing and his photographs have been published in hundreds of books, magazines, and calendars. Art now photographs, travels, speaks, and teaches extensively in North America. For more information please visit his website at www.birdsasart.com.

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