These flowers came from a rosebush on our property.  Amazingly, those four in front are all on the same stem – orange, pink, white, yellow-and-pink…  I love these flame roses.  They smell so delicate and fruity. 

The lighting here can be tricky, since it is coming in behind the subject, at a high angle.  It is easy to overexpose your background and lose detail.

Most of the time you want to preserve your background.  But if you’re doing a portrait or you want to focus on close up detail (macro shots, etc), blowing out your background by overexposing or by using a really shallow depth of field can be very, very helpful. 

Here’s why: if you pull in for a tight shot, overexposing (translation: allowing more light into your camera) can result in an ethereal glow, sort of like movies where the hero wakes up from an illness and sees a bright light with the gorgeous heroine in the center of it.

This shot is good for a desktop background.  You have room on the left for icons, and a fairly good image on the right.  But it’s cropped badly and isn’t very visually interesting.  It just looks like a mistake.

Overexposing a little more and pulling in even tighter, you can get this effect.  I kinda like it!  It looks intentional – which is important.  Make sure that if you’re going to overexpose your image, it’s obvious that it was intended to be that way.

Overexposing your background is not for everyone or every situation, but it can be an artistic impression of your subject.  You’ve seen these images with people.  They put them on a white backdrop and “blow out” the image with hot lighting.  What you see is white background and eyes and lips that really pop.  They usually put in a fan to blow the girl’s hair around.  It’s a cool effect that you can use if your child is against a white backdrop or a window with a lot of light coming in.  Just make sure you meter (or put the flashing red dot in the middle) on your subject’s face, on a semi-shadowy area, when you expose, or you’ll end up with a sharp shot of the window and your subject completely dark.  It’s called “high key” photography.

Here’s an example with a person.  The window behind my girl is lit from outside.  I don’t really want to see the blinds.  If I expose for her face, the window blinds will lose all detail, resulting in an even, partially blurry white square behind her.  I realize that her eyes are cross-eyed.  Can you see that I’ve lost detail around her head and hair (what little she has?)  Also hallmarks of overexposing the background on a dimly-lit subject.

That’s not a high key image, but you get the idea.  Understanding exposure and being aware of your background can help you compose a shot that’s visually interesting and properly lit.  Don’t overexpose your background if your subject is well-lit, however, or you’ll also overexpose your subject and wind up losing detail in the foreground as well as the background!

I hope this helps you decide when to take photos (and how) with a brightly-lit background!