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Believe it or not, one of the important keys to get-
ting a good profile of a subject is the background
in the picture. You want to select a relatively plain
background, one without distracting elements
such as trees, branches, signs, and so on.
Solid color backgrounds work well, as illustrated
by the picture that appears on this lesson’s opener
page of a Massai woman posing in the doorway
to her hut.
When the background is dark and there is plenty
of light falling on the subject’s face, you’ll get a
well-pronounced profile.
For a correct exposure, you’ll need to set the ex-
posure for the subject’s face, because the dark area
behind the subject could fool your camera’s expo-
sure meter into “thinking” that the scene is darker
than it actually is, resulting in the subject being
slightly overexposed.
To set the exposure, use your camera’s spot meter
and meter the subject’s face, or move in close and
lock the exposure on the subject’s face, then move
back, recompose your picture, and shoot. If you
want to add just a bit of light to the subject’s face,
use the daylight fill-in flash technique that I de-
scribed in Lesson 26.
The opposite is true, too. If the background is
bright and there is