When Should You Use Background Replacements For Headshots?
Sydney businesses are always busy, especially those where staff need to go out to clients’ during the day. Sometimes it’s not possible to go on location for a lifestyle headshot. One option some professionals use are background replacements.
What Is A Background Replacement?
Sometimes a small business with multiple locations really wants to do an outdoors headshot session, but find it hard to get everyone out on location. At times, if we photograph carefully and with purpose, we can use a photograph with a plain background and replace it with the outdoor scenery required.
This technique seems increasingly popular with Sydney headshot photographers lately. We’ve also seen attempts that look like a child took some scissors to a photo. Or the lighting is so wrong it just looks superimposed.
In this case we used a generic background as an example, but it would work especially well if we go to the real location and capture a few varying shots of the scenery to be used.
The Advantages
You can get two looks in one session. One has the original background, done in your office, and the other with the background replaced. They can be used in different situations, and when done well people won’t notice the edit. For example, below are the original studio shots from the session.
Also if you get new staff, one of the problems with an outdoors session is that as seasons change the light at the location will also change. With this technique we have a library of backgrounds that we can reuse so that everything matches up.
Thing To Look Out For
The technique is deceptively simple. Phone apps even promise to do it in 1 step. There are many traps if you don’t know what to look out for.
Sometimes the light just doesn’t make sense. Maybe the person is lit like daytime, and the background is the sunset. It looks fake, and that feeling of fake applies to you too – not what you wanted your headshot to do!
There might be white halos around the hair, or the light is just unrealistic. Maybe the angle and scale of the background means the person is a 10-storey tall giant or lego minifig sized. The amount of blur in the background often doesn’t make sense. It looks like you must be floating 100m above the sea.
Any of these issues can make your effort look childish, and affects your brand image.
Like all tools, it must be used carefully to generate the benefits you desire.
We can help you select a suitable background that will work for your goals.
Indoor Background Replacements
Indoor backgrounds are a little more successful. Because indoor lighting is studio lighting, we can more confidently match all factors when creating the final composite image.
With a given background, we vary heights and sizes. This simulates what the angle of view would have been according to each person’s height.
Here are some shots taken on a blank wall, then replaced with a kitchen background. They stand up well to scrutiny.
Set Background Replacements
Sometimes head office will dictate a background to use for all corporate headshots across the globe. These backgrounds are usually chosen from stock images and not particularly tailored to your office. They aren’t even created for headshot use.
To use these effectively, not only do we need to match the lighting to the background, we must also deal with size, angles, perspectives. If used blindly, your staff may look like giants, the floor may look sloped upwards at 45 degrees, or your office may look like it’s 100m long to the windows!
Here is an example of a shoot with a predefined background. We edited the background to match realistic office colors, changed the perspective, matched colors, and more.
Can You Tell The Background Is Changed?
With staff headshots, it’s not always possible to gather everyone together for a designated headshot day. Even with the best planning, busy schedules, illness or emergencies can mean someone misses out.
With background replacements we can have a makeup session at our studio and make it all look consistent with the rest of the team.
For example, if a satellite worker in a remote city cannot come into the head office, we can still provide them with a professional headshot that matches the rest of the team. We have associates in all major cities in Australia!
Look at the five headshots above. Three were taken in clinic, and one in studio and edited later. The final result is seamless, and you wouldn’t even notice the difference if we hadn’t told you.
Half Body Replacements
Sometimes you also need your half or 3/4 body portraits for editorials and profiles. You can also replace the backgrounds on these, but care must be taken with what you choose.
Firstly, you can’t replace with the same image, because the scale is different. In this case, we were lucky to have a full length background image that could be used for a seated portrait.
Secondly, the angle is also important. With angles matching, everything looks good. If they don’t match, it will look like you are leaning forwards/backwards and defying gravity. The viewer won’t understand this sense of unease, and it gets misattributed to a feeling about you.
Lastly, we don’t show the floor. Where your feet or the chair meets the floor is the hardest part to match up.
Conclusion
Professional background replacement is another technique that we can use to help busy Sydney SMEs show off their brand in a consistent way. It’s most effective in industries where staff are often on the road, but also need a connect with their local community.
Executive Images provides Corporate Headshot Photography at your business location. Contact us now and let us help you make your best first impression.
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