Education Field Instructional

6 Ways to Make Your Subject Stand Out More in a Photo

Chris Gampat
No Comments
06/23/2015
1 Min read

Last Updated on 06/23/2015 by Chris Gampat

Screenshot taken from the video
Screenshot taken from the video

Making your subject stand out in a scene has a bit to do with contrast, but those aren’t the only methods. As the folks from Weekly Imogen demonstrate in a video after the jump, there are many other ways to do this. Some of the best include motion blur, depth of field (they call focus) and positioning in the image in accordance with the rule of thirds.

Some of the other well known ways involve color contrast, and contrasting shapes (aka geometry.) These all work very well but we believe that contrast, depth of field, and colors are the strongest ways. On the more technical side, including a flash of some sort to get a 3D lighting look and add micro-contrast will help even more.

On the more artistic side, what really draw’s a person into the scene to begin with has to start with excellent content in the image. The reason why Bresson’s images are so captivating is because of the fact that he captures such beautiful moments. The same goes for Steve McCurry and many others. Intimacy and appealing to human emotions/sense will make someone be more drawn in–the latter is most effective with food photography.

We’ve got the video after the jump.

contrast photo stand out weeklyimogen
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.