How to photograph yourself without the background objects and people

 

Why am I in silhouette? And how did I do it? I used to do this a long time ago but have not done it recently. I needed it because the background was unsuitable. Too many items which were unsuitable. Part of a door, a curtain. I tried removing the background by cropping but it still looked ridiculous.  irrelevant, distracting.

However, I recently tried clicking on some options in my editing function on my phone and re-discovered something Samsung calls lassoo. You encircle the item you want to keep. 

I used to find this very fiddly. If you weren't careful, you had to try a dozen times, because it would cut off your head, or your right arm, or one foot. However this time it worked perfectly. One try and I had it just as I wanted it.

If you want a photo and the background is not right, try editing it out. This is great when you are travelling and other step into the photo. Get rid of litter. Or people who you don't have permission to photograph. 

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Plastics? Leave Only Footprints

I  won through the first level of the contest of a speech about the environment. Then the second level.

Later I was called to speak on stage at a training for would be entrepreneurs to demonstrate the ability to speak in public to raise awareness for a cause or charity.

I said:

When I walk around a room like this or the street in a city, I notice all the debris that human beings leave behind, on tables and under chairs and in wastebins. We are like snails which leave behind slime, a trail of evidence of where they have been.

It doesn't have to be like that. You must have seen pictures of the debris left behind after a major event such as a rock concert in a field. Piles of trash left behind. It doesn't have to look like that next day. Every monring you can walk into Disney World and the place is pristine clean, because a group of poeple have cleaned up.

Seeing the place look clean has encouraged everybody to keep it clean. In Canada they found that even two pieces of litter on the ground was enough to make others think everybody was dropping litter and it was OK to do so. So do your bit.

If a million people in a city all drop litter we have a mess, and clutter in the ocean. If a million pople use recycling bins or better still take litter home, which everybody does in Japan, we would have clean cities and clean oceans. You can pick up a piece of litter dropped by somebody else.

When I walk past a shopping mall I see beautiful bags discarded in bins next to the smart shops. Big tote bags with lovely handles. If the bags are pretty and clean I rescue them. They can all be reused.

Most of the things we throw away could be reused. A discarded t-shirt which is old or stained or no longer wanted because it has last year's date could be made into a tee-towel. Clothes which don't fit can be changed. A top which is too tight can be slit up the sides and made into a tabard or tunic.

When I walk around the ground floor of both public housing and provate condos, I see large items of furniture abandoned by the bins. Chairs and tables have a missing leg or are chipped or need repainting.

Singapore flag

A Singapore resident told me that Singaporeans like to throw out the old and buy new. But those items, if taken to Malaysia would be used by poor people or owners of second hand shops. Old TVs and screens would be fixed.

All the small items could be reused in our homes. In the Sixties it was fashionable to conver a glass bottle into a table lamp and you could buy a top to fix to the bottle. A plastic or glass bottle can be cut in half and made into a flower vase or a  pen and pencil holder.

A cardboard cereal box can be cut diagonally and turned into a magazine holder. At Chrsitmas I have seen ceral boxes advertising that the box can be flattned and reused as a board game which is printed on the reverse of the box. I hope that one day we will all be able to reduce the mount of waste from a house or building to only the contents of one small box a year, as has been done by at least one family who experimented to see if it was possible. Yes, it is. That is my vision for my future, and yours and ours.

Author
Angela Lansbury.

Litter and Recycling Plastic - How To Learn From Other Countries And The Past

 Recycling bin with clear labels for households in Singapore showing what can be recycled using this bin and what can't. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

One problem easily solved is that you need two adjacent bins with one slot for plastic or glass bottles and another for different rubbish. It could be done like coin machines. Make bottles in four sizes and have round or square holes the size for each bottle. Adjacent and attached (although perhaps detachable?) is another bin with letter box style slits for plastic bags. You could even make the bins look like bottles and bags. I've stood in foreign airports trying to read the list of what goes in which bin and been baffled. You also need a drain in which you can empty the contents, the liquid dregs of the bottle.

COLOURS
As for colour schemes, there's no international standard and it's counter-intuitive. In Harrow in NW London, green which you would think would be the friendly recycling bin is for non-recycling. Blue is for recycling.

If you drop the item in the wrong bin, the only way to retrieve it is to reach inside a dirty bin getting your sleeves dirty. However, you can't reach the bottom because it's longer than your arm. So then you have to empty the entire mess onto the drive. Ten minutes wasted.

You can spend a minute an item looking for the recycling symbol and then you get an ambiguous message, recyclable in some areas. Most people don't know there are several symbols for types of plastic. It would be simpler if plastic packaging had numbers and colours as well.

SHAPES
You could also print wrapping paper with an amusing recycling symbol or background stripes, dots and diagonals. Alternatively, or to save confusion, a coloured frame with wavy edges, to save having to hunt for instructions on the corners or guess.

Bins could cary the message, this bin recycles red circle symbol packages. This packaging is blue triangle two. This box for green tree three. Then even a foreigner or a child or a person with Alzheimers can see to match the blue or blue dot package with the blue bin and the green tree symbol with the green tree bin.

The bin itself can be designed in the shape of a bottle or tree. That's been done with animals shapes and even sounds like barking and thanking you to encourage children to feed litter into bins.

This was done successfully in the UK in the nineteen fifties and / or sixties.

You can also give pocket money to children, make the unemployed work for their money, give money to the homeless, but giving money back on returned bottles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-

Article on success of Norwegian system of deposits on bottles.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.

Listed Buildings To Visit And Photograph

If you want to take a daily walk or a free tour of your area of the city where you are living or visiting, look at a map and find the historic buildings nearby. You might pick historic buildings in your nearest high street, or old buildings in the countryside or down leafy side streets.

Map Search
My family did a search in north west London and we were amazed at the number of listed buildings. A great opportunity for a walk and some photography.

St Anselm's Church, Hatch End.
Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Timing Your Trip
If your primary aim is fresh air and free of noise, you might choose to walk early in the morning. A late uncle of mine used to travel the world and take photos (actually colour slides - I still have them) of temples and buildings around the world at dawn.

You might also try gardens and parks with the morning dew. Carry a plastic bag like a dog poop scoop to remove litter from the ground, especially cigarette butts dropped around doorways, for your romantic photos.

Reality Pictures
Other people prefer to show life how it is. They like to reveal that beauty spots are ruined by litter. The french word verite or truth or reality comes to mind. Ralists want to show that third world countries are slums, dumps, poverty stricken, and not the idyllic places of our dreams. I like to take one of each. First the reality, then how it looked after I cleared it.

People Pictures
I also take a place without people and with people. I had an editor who always wanted people in photos. He said people made it interesting.

Local Characters
But you also need the right people. Do you want to show only local people to match the venue. Or tourists enjoying the trip. Or people meeting the locals?

A Chinese magazine might want only Asians. Or they might want only foreigners, because that's what readers aspire to imitate, or because that fits the text. Or because they already have lots of local people and want something different.

Fashions
I found that people in last year's fashions dated a photo. They look untidy with shirts hanging out. They were inelegant. For a fashion magazine the aim would be to include cute characters.

Passers-By
Passers-by are often keen to pose.
They might move and caused blur.

What if you want a natural shot. Even people standing still or slumped can be an anomaly. An amazing number of people shut their eyes, cover part of their faces, glare, stand looking gormless.

Others are in the wrong place with trees and lamp posts growing out of their heads.

They run forward demanding money. Or try to rob you whilst you are taking a photo.

They move hands and wave and cause blur. They move out of shot at the last moment, leaving bits of bodies. You get a disembodied arm or foot as if you are chasing a fugitive.

The solution is to take lots of shots. Choose the best. (This is called bracketing.)

Twilight
I like twilight pictures. I won a competition from Polaroid and a ferry company when we were given Polaroid cameras. I took a statue silhouetted against the still light evening sky.

Angela Lansbury, travel photographer and writer, author and speaker.