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Paying Attention to your backgrounds - Avoid 'Photobombing'

As professional photographers, paying attention to all the elements of your photograph is critical. Now, I'm not talking about studio work, or situations where you are in control of the entire environment, for this blog post. Instead, what I am talking about are uncontrolled situations are the regular experiences of wedding photographers, photojournalists, event photographers, and so on.

A good photographer will do more than just properly expose and focus the image, but taking it to the next level, they will actually compose a good image too, so the subjects are properly framed as well. Once again, taking it to a higher level, eliminating static "photo bombs" like glowing exit signs, lamp posts and trees coming out of peoples heads, and other odd objects makes for a much more professional photograph. One of the few remaining road blocks to a good image is the human 'photo bomb'. That is, when there's someone in the background doing something distracting, either by happenstance, or with the intention of ruining your photograph. In news coverage, waiting for the other people in the photograph to either be a part of it by looking at your subject can take seemingly forever. Few things irk me more than photographing a subject at a podium only to have the people on either side of the speaker looking down, looking away, or otherwise not paying attention to the person whom the entire audience is expected to be listening to!

So, for some inexplicable reason, it is with a good chuckle that I saw this tounge-in-cheek new 'feature' in Photoshop. Enjoy the video, and for more examples of photobombs, check these out on YouTube, and Flickr!

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