How photographing background plates can help you in your work

Do you have the habit of photographing plates? This doesn’t refer to food photography, but to the backgrounds you capture to give you more options when you get to the editing process. In this video, Jay P. Morgan shares some great advice why photographing plates is important and how they can be useful for your work. They can definitely save you sometimes and help you get the shot even when everything seems lost.

After you’re done shooting the subject, let them move away and shoot only the background a couple of times. This way you’ll have a few backgrounds available and you can choose the one that suits the image best.

Jay gives an example of LA photo shoot, where he photographed his brother. He shot a couple of background shots separately so he had more options for creating the composite later.

Shooting plates is a good habit, and here are some reasons to develop it:

1. They cover you if you make a mistake

If you create a habit of taking a couple of plates before and after the shoot, you’ll have something to cover you if you make a mistake. In case you have a photo where the subject is perfect and the background is far from it, you can always use some of the plates and make everything look neat.

2. Getting rid of the distracting elements

If there’s something in the frame that really bothers you and distracts from the subject, you can tell the subject to move and shoot a plate. It’s easier to clean the background without the subject in it.

3. Building a library

Whenever there’s a cool background, you can take a few shots of it and build a library. Create a folder for your plates, and you can use them up later to create composites. You can do this because sometimes you won’t be able to shoot the subject in a specific environment. Or, of course, it can be just for fun and for the sakes of creativity.

If there are places you can’t visit, you can also buy background plates and use them to make composites. But nevertheless, next time you go out and shoot, remember to take a couple of background shots without the subject as well. You may need them, and they could help you in your work.

[Photographing Background Plates | The Slanted Lens]