Black Backgrounds in the Field

Photos and Text by: Jared Lloyd

“I have been trying to create those really cool black background photos you make but can’t seem to get it like yours in Photoshop. What’s the trick?” – Carol B. New York.

This is a question I get quite a lot from folks. How do I make these types of photos?

To begin with, it’s probably best for me to start by telling you that these photos are NOT made in Photoshop. Or Lightroom. Or any other photo editing software. These photographs are made in the field using natural light. Hard stop.

In fact, a trained eye can almost always tell immediately when the background was turned black in Photoshop. There are plenty of artifacts in the photo that gives it away. And if you have ever tried to do this, then you probably know exactly what I mean. There is an over-processed look to everything. Stuff doesn’t match up. The lighting is off. The shadows don’t match. Why is the background black when the sun is coming from THAT angle?

So, I create these in the field. It’s part of the fun. Like finding a unicorn (still hoping to photograph one), when all the universe comes together for me in that one moment just right, the reward is so much greater than a “Photoshoped” image with a fake background.

I have some feels about this. =)

To make this discussion a little simpler, let’s throw some fancy words on to the table so we know what we are talking about when we say, “black backgrounds.”

This type of lighting, whether it’s in a photograph or painting, is called Chiaroscuro. Don’t be afraid. It simply means Light Dark in Italian.

For those of you who have been reading these weekly articles for some time, you are probably familiar with me using this term and seeing these types of photographs from me. Although this style of photography is in no way unique to just me, it is one that I have become “known for.” And so, I have written about this, my favorite of all lighting scenarios, many times before.

There are technically two types of lighting styles that fall under this category in art. The first really is simply chiaroscuro – which is what you see with the photo of the oystercatcher above. The second is, what you might call extreme chiaroscuro, is tenebrism.

Tenebrism comes from the Italian tenebroso which roughly means “mysterious.” This is extremely dramatic illumination that is used to create, well, even more drama through the use of “spotlighting.”

This photo of a wild horse from the Pryor Mountains of Montana is an example of tenebrism. Comparing the two photos, you can see the subtle difference.

Since tenebrism is technically a form of chiaroscuro, and the difference can be both subtle and subjective, I tend to just lump them both together when discussing this type of photography.

For me, utilizing this type of lighting scenario is very similar to creating high key photographs. The idea being to use either shadows (chiaroscuro), or light (high key), to isolate the subject from their world and showcase their form and beauty without complicating the visual experience with other compositional elements.

Fundamentally, chiaroscuro is basically extreme contrast in a situation. Light and shadows.

Understand that our eyes can see detail across the equivalent of something like 22+ stops of light. Compare this to our cameras. Even the very best high dynamic range 35mm mirrorless cameras capable of capturing information across 14 stops of light at their native ISO still falls far short of the human eye.

For some, this is a limitation to be overcome with more and more fantastical technology. A different camera. A better camera.

For me, it’s a nuance of the tools in hand that I can exploit for artistic purposes.

At the root of this whole light / dark photography is side lighting – usually coming in at 90+ degrees from the axis of your camera.

When light is coming in from a 90-degree angle or more, objects in the background will often be in shade. In the case of the oystercatcher up top, it was the edge of the marsh that was in shade just a few minutes before sunset. In the case of the wild horse, it was a forest.

I really like to work with side light. It creates depth, dimension, and detail. It breathes life into our subjects by creating the appearance of volume through the use of shadows that wrap around our subject. It shows off feather detail or muscles or clumps of fur by creating tiny bits of localized contrast on such things. Photograph the same subject with the light coming from behind YOU, aka: frontal lighting, and all those shadows disappear. They are hidden from view. And the result is a flat looking photo – albeit with good color.  Move your feet or seat, let that light come in from an angle, and everything begins to change dramatically.

And let that light come in from enough of an angle, with the subject close enough to a solid background, and you end up with a beautiful black backdrop to showcase you subject against.

I had spent the afternoon in the seat of a 17ft long sea kayak photographing the biodiversity of oyster beds. Oysters are the coral reefs of the colder northern waters of the Atlantic Ocean. These places explode with biological diversity. They are critical to the health and wealth of waters and estuarine ecosystems. And given enough oysters, all the water in an estuary can be filtered and cleaned multiple times over by these bivalves within the span of a single high tide.

But the problem with photographing life around oyster beds, as opposed to a coral reef, is that they are ugly. There is no staghorn or sun corals. No splashes of red and orange will be revealed with a pop of flash. And if you are not close enough for someone to instantly recognize they are oysters in the photograph, well, they can start to look like big piles of poop.

It’s tough to make a pile of poop look good.

So, how do we make life along a reef of oysters look sexy?

That is the million-dollar question that spans all aspects of wildlife and conservation photography.

For me, on this day, on this reef, the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting in conjunction with an American oystercatcher, a highly specialized bird whose beak is as fine-tuned by evolution as those of any of Darwin’s finches, was one such way.

Anytime we approach a situation, the first thing we want to ask ourselves is, “what is the light.”

The second thing is, “what is the background?”

When we begin thinking about light first, and background second, both of which are notably before we think about the subject themselves, then we begin to see and think about photography differently.

The oystercatcher was going to do what the oystercatcher was going to do. Getting close and photographing a nice pose “in the light” is just a matter of field craft. That’s the easy part. That’s the obvious part. That’s what everyone does. And obsessing over that is a fast track to making frame filling technically perfect cliché images that are a dime a dozen and nobody cares about.

But by thinking beyond the subject, analyzing the situation, considering all the “if this, then that” of the light and background and environment and biography of the species, then we are able to take a truly goofy looking bird on top of something that could be mistaken for a pile of poop, and create something beautiful.

Personally, I refuse to create these types of photographs in post-processing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer that software and our ability to edit our images is 50% of the game now-a-days.

But when it comes to a situation like this, where would the fun be in that?