I have written on this topic before but funnily enough even I sometimes feel a hint of trepidation as I suggest to clients that we shoot on green screen, because I am anticipating a negative reaction -- doubt that this is a route to high quality portraits, a preconception that it will look fake or bad (it will not) or will be too much trouble (it’s the opposite). I get it. I've seen the bad and obvious examples, too. But over and over I am reminded how hugely advantageous it is to shoot this way, and conversely how undermining it can be to shoot environmental portraits the “old, normal” way. So I am going to try again to summarize why green screen portrait photography is in many circumstances the superior way to go...if it is done well!
Just the other day I shot an environmental portrait in an office and ended up shooting the portrait the “old way”, which, of course, we used to do all the time…ie. the person is positioned in the environment and the portrait is created in camera. Had I used a green screen, I would have got essentially the same photo, except it would have been better, because I would have had the luxury of exposing and adjusting the background independently and as an added bonus I could have lit the subject from the other side (an artistic choice which wasn’t an option because there was no room for the light on that side).
With environmental portraits the photographer always has the challenge of balancing the exposure of the background with the exposure of the person, and in this case, once I was back at the studio I wished the background had been a little lighter. Within one capture, had I exposed for a lighter background (ie. had more of the exposure coming from the ambient light) the subject would have appeared lighter too, and the windows in the background would have been too bright, so I erred on the side of caution because if you over expose (ie. “burn out”) highlights you are never getting them back.
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| An example of a bright window in the background overexposing the edge of a person’s hair; the edges are missing, never to be retrieved. |
But can’t you do anything in Photoshop (other than retrieve lost highlights)? The short answer to this is always yes; where there’s a budget there’s a way. There are lots of softwares (Photoshop and various plug-ins) that purport to facilitate seamless background removal and replacement but in my experience they are nowhere near perfect…the edges are not consistently clean or accurate, especially if the background shares colours, tones and densities with the person…ie. there is not great separation between the subject and the background. And if the original background is dark and you want to replace it with a much lighter one, or vice versa this can be very problematic. With green screen however, specialized software specifically designed to remove all the green pixels works fantastically well 99% of the time, giving you huge freedom and control over what backgrounds you choose to use.
So what, specifically, are the advantages of shooting with green screen?:
- Independent control over the exposure of the background and subject
- Ability to incorporate backgrounds that it would be impractical to set up and shoot in front of…either due to lack of privacy, lack of space, or lack of availability on the shoot day
- No need to worry about the time, weather, or available light in a room on shoot day
- No need for a visually appealing room to shoot the portrait(s)
- Control of where the subject is placed within the background frame, or where the background is placed behind the subject
- Control over the shape of the person, if, for example, the camera put on 10 lbs., or the subject is carrying a few extra not-their-usual-self lbs., or they lost weight and the suit looks too big, or the shoulder pads look too big, or the arms look a little bulgy, or the pants make the hips look wider than they are, or the hair isn’t quite the right shape, etc. I do subtle reshaping very, very frequently (often at the specific request of clients).
When the person and the background are one photo and you want to change the shape of the person two possible options are: 1) you push over the edge of the person, understanding that the background goes with them, 2) you close-cut the person (ie. cut them out and make a separate layer out of them), so you can change their shape as you wish, understanding you then have to recreate (clone) what you would have seen behind them that was missing from the original photo because it was obscured by the body. Unless you were fortunate enough to have shot a plate shot for each subject (ie. a shot of the background without the person which requires a camera locked in position on a tripod) which does help a lot (although it doesn’t help with the exposure situation mentioned above). Either way it’s a lot of work that clients don’t generally expect to be paying for and that would have been much simpler with a green screen.
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| These three sets of images (above and below) illustrate one of the most useful benefits of shooting with green screen, and that is the ability to do shape adjustments without creating adverse effects in the background. |
- Flexibility in terms of backgrounds (ie. you are not stuck with the environment you shot in…you can easily repurpose/refresh an image, and have more than one option for an image…eg. a white and environmental background versions of one portrait)
- Highly efficient method for producing a varied set of photos…ie. one green screen set to shoot multiple poses and crops, and a few extra minutes to find and shoot potential backgrounds in and around the office (assuming an office has visually appealing spots available…if not then photographer’s archive or stock photo backgrounds may be used). As opposed to having to set-up over and over in different spots around the office which no busy executive is going to have the time for.
- And here’s where it gets harder to explain but stay with me…green screens also let you cheat, so you can get more aesthetically pleasing results due to the flexibility the photographer has with camera angle in front of a green screen. For example, a higher camera angle (looking down on the subject) is known, generally, to be more flattering…there will be no visual cues to the viewer that the camera angle was high…the subject will just look better. In an environmental setting we are often limited to more straight-across camera angles so as to avoid perspective distortion of vertical lines in the background. This also limits placement of the elements in the background relative to the person…plus, people move. If we’ve shot the person and backdrop separately we can position the person exactly where we want them against the background, whereas if you are capturing the whole image in camera, the photographer has less control over the exact position of the person, not to mention the differences that will occur when shooting multiple people of different heights and shapes in front of that background.
I illustrated some of what I’m writing about in a blog post a while ago: https://khollinrakemakemepretty.blogspot.com/2021/04/why-i-love-shooting-portraits-against.html
The only good reasons to shoot a head and shoulders or standing torso* portrait in the actual environment are if there is no post-production budget at all and you are expecting images to be ready to go as shot, which may be the case with “lifestyle” photos for image libraries but will pretty much never be the case for executive and leadership portraits. (*Where green screens would not be recommended is in circumstances where the person is interacting with the environment…eg. sitting in a chair, sitting at a desk, leaning on a wall, etc., or when the number of people requiring portraits is greater than about fifteen, because the time and care required to make them look varied and individual, ie. not cookie cutter and fake, becomes prohibitive.)
I shoot many portraits on green screens. I love the flexibility, control and creativity this technique affords me. It gives me so many more options in terms of being able to create just the right overall look for any portrait depending on the client’s brand and particular needs. I can tailor the background to the person’s look, what they’re wearing, what we feel is appropriate and what will really make their portrait sing.
I hope this helps! If there is anything worrying you about shooting this way that I haven't addressed please let me know.
hollinrake.com
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