Exhibit A- Yep, there's my kid on her bike 2.5 years ago. But what else do you see? Can your eyes stay still or do you instantly feel the need to go looking from one side to the other? To the left we have some green box thing and a house, neither of which are part of my subject.
Exhibit B- She'd be a lot more interesting if that Dora backpack, random junk, and big green chair weren't in the picture. I had no concept of the word "subject" in photography at this point. Wooden desks and Mrs. Kelly's un-air-conditioned-teenage boy smelling-inferno of an English class were all that came to mind at this point when the word subject was mentioned.
Exhibit C Does this one have a different feel than the other two?In the last photo you know who the subject is and she isn't cluttered by beastly green chairs or cartoon covered backpacks. Your eyes don't have to get all dazed and confused from scanning one end of the photo to the next. Which one would you choose to print?
There are times when a cluttered background can make your subject stand out just as well as a clean one. Typically they are telling a story and have been created by the photographer with purpose in mind. This is difficult to pull off effectively.
Watch your backgrounds (and foregrounds) for better photos. Look all over the frame before you press the shutter. Sometimes all you need to do is move something out of the way, or move your own feet over a little to change the perspective.
