You looking at me?

So this musing is on one of my pet hates in portrait and wedding photography when there are two or more people featured but you only want to put emphasis on one person.

So one of the classic ways to isolate your subject in photography is to use a wide aperture to blur out/defocus the background so your subject is given more emphasis. So if you have two people in your composition, as in the photo below, and you really want to feature only one person you can put them at different distances to the lens, use a wide aperture, focus on the person you want to give more emphasis to and shoot. This way the other person will be out of focus but the subject will be sharp, perfect.

My pet hate is that so many times I see photographers have the defocussed person looking at the camera and so visually and psychologically it really makes the portrait look awkward, here’s why.

First the science bit! The human visual system has evolved over millions of years to be predisposed to seek out faces. It goes back to when we first descended from the trees and roamed the grass plains of Africa, we had to be aware of predators, enemies, a possible mating partner etc. So if we saw anything that half resembled a face, (two eyes, a mouth, a nose etc) we would pay it more attention. So you can imagine a prehistoric human wandering through the jungle and thinking to himself “Is that a pair of eyes, is it a lion, a hyena, is it a trick of the light or shadows fooling me”. Basically our ancestors who were visually best at distinguishing between enemies, predators and mates evolved, and those that couldn’t did not. As communities and tribes grew and it became more familiar to see human faces we then had to distinguish which faces were important or unimportant and whether we should look at it more. One of the ways we could distinguish whether it was important for us to look at a face was whether they were looking at us!

So bringing us back to the portrait discussion. A photograph with the defocussed person looking at the camera is much more uncomfortable to look at. As the photographer we want to put the emphasis only on the person in focus but because the viewer can see two faces looking at the camera they feel compelled (due to millions of years of evolution) to look at the defocussed person as well, because that person is out of focus it visually grates with the viewer. It is always much better to have the second person looking away from the camera (and therefore the viewer) as we don’t feel the need to look at them because they’re not looking at us! In simple terms, if it’s important for the second person to be looking at the camera then it should be important for them to be in focus!

The wedding photograph below of Rachel is far more attractive and easy on the eye because her bridesmaid is looking away, this then makes Rachel the main attraction and we will visually give her more attention. Yes our eyes will occasionally drift to the bridesmaid and then come back to settle on Rachel, but this is much more comfortable than if the bridesmaid was also looking at the camera because our eyes would constantly flick back and forth between them giving it a visual awkwardness. So next time you feature two or more people in a portrait, but you want to give more emphasis on one person, make sure the other people are looking away.