Watch your background on Zoom! Unintentional Humour. Intentional Humor.

On Zoom you can create virtual backgrounds showing yourself in front of famous landmarks, or on the beach with the waves rolling in behind you. A moving background can be distracting.

Even worse is a real life moving background. It is not new for passers-by to accidentally walking across behind a live reporter, or to stand behind making silly faces. The technical term is photobombing. Wikipedia found me these.

 Many people turn off their cameras at home for good reason. They are eating. They are half naked.

Others do not check their backgrounds. You can see all sort of personal stuff. 

 What is on the wall behind, you, on the desk, or cabinet. An interview candidate for a job had to quickly remove empty bottles of alcohol, kept as souvenirs and decoration. He was applying for a job in Pakistan.

Children and Pets

Hilarious moments from the early days of working from home and meetings on zoom included backgrounds of dogs or cats which wanted to read the news or express their reaction. Others included children bursting into the room, dragged out by a crawling mother.

Bedrooms

At my Toastmasters meetings, I was once mesmerized by the speaker's girlfriend, lying in the bed behind him, every now and then turning over. My mind was inventing what she could do, alone, or if he would later join her, unaware that the back of the room was on camera.

Toilet, Bathroom and Shower

One Toastmasters International member frequently tells the story of how she went to the toilet wearing a pin-on microphone.

Recently I watched a visitor yawn, move the camera, get up and disappear into the shower at the back of the bedroom. The shower water started to run down the glass.

I was waiting to see a silhouette. It reminded me of Psycho. Would an evil stranger creep in? If so, we could not contact him.

I was unable to concentrate on my speeches and roles. Why? Because I was watching to see whether he would emerge wearing pyjama bottoms, a towel, or neither.

Some of the professional Zoom applications allow you to set up your group shots of audience faces in settings such as a classroom of tiered seating, or even mirror photos with frames. For single individuals, yourself, add humorous hats, moustaches and glasses. Key words to search for are: facial effects, studio effects, and make up filters.

Useful Websites

Zoom on facial effects to enhance

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115002595343-Enhancing-your-video-in-Zoom

https://shotkit.com/funny-zoom-backgrounds/

https://www.ricotta.team/blog/zoom-memes

Humorous zoom effect tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v0Y9b--zBM

Please share links to your favourite posts

Advice on foreground lighting for zoom - and backgrounds

Sit near a window. Have a table lamp. Make sure your face is lit from both sides. Avoid being silhouetted.

To appear larger, move towards the screen. Make sure you are looking at the lens, not down at your notes, nor up at a picture of yourself or others on a large screen.

Don't slip down the frame. Nor so high up that the top of your head is cut off.

Check the background. Once I was mesmerized by the speaker's girlfriend lying in bed, behind him. She lay on her back. She rolled over. I thought she was going to fall out of bed.

She lay on her front. I thought she was going to have an orgasm.

Her hand reached out. For what? A book. I thought it was going to be a sex toy.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO6utfQm7Bg

Memories Of The Walls At Huntingdon And The Couple Beyond The Wall

Walking Around The Hotel Car Park in Huntingdon.

The couple watching the clouds go by.

The Couple Seen through the trees.

A couple in silhouette and tree with shadows.

The Hole In The Wall Frames A Distant Object.

Hole in the wall with shadow.

Trees beyond the hole in the wall.

Growing A Climber On Supports. All photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Author

Angela Lansbury, Travel Writer and Photographer, Author and Speaker.

See Statues of Gagarin in Greenwich, London, Belgrade, or Moscow, and tips on photographing statues

Gagarin in Greenwich, London. Wikipedia photo and phtographer details.

Statue of Gagarin, Moscow. Photo and photographer details in Wikipedia.

Problem
The latest Gagarin monument in Belgrade, Servia, lovely, but - locals don't like it. You have to stand on tiptoe if you are tiny to see it and photograph it. It's so high up your camera will get it distorted.

Answers
On the other hand, I have now learned that the capital of Belgrade is Serbia. This is not news to anybody living in Serbia, but I am sure the tourist board will be initially horrified that some people still don't know, but gratified that they are back on the map inside people's brains. All publicity is good publicity.

Those extenders for smartphones, mostly used for holding in front of you for selfies, are also useful to capture high up statues.

When photographing a statue, I take it from all four directions, kneeling down, standing on tiptoe, then pressed against a nearby lamp-post or another solid item to prevent camera shake.

It's also worthwhile taking a photograph of a statue, or any object, at three times of the day. You can have the light on the features and the face, a cast shadow, or a silhouette at night.

Statue List
Now, added to my list of statues to see:
1 Yuri Gagarin, Belgrade, capital of Serbia.
2 Yuri Gagarin statue, Greenwich, London, England
3 Statue of Yuri Gagarin, Moscow, Russia
PHotos in Wikipedia

Useful websites
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-43701570 (News on Gagarin in Belgrade. Apr 11 2018)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
PS Silhouette - another word to add to my list of French words. See previous post for quiz on French words.

How to remove your own shadow from a photo, fix parallel lines, create silhouettes

Problem
I photograph an object on a table and the shadow of my mobile phone and my head is on the lower half of the photo.

Answers
Practise Eliminating Your Own Shadow
Practice with the phone in your hand before taking a photo.

Practise Indoors
1 Practise on your kitchen table.
2 Practise looking through the window at your own garden ready to snap a bird or fox.

(NB Americans simplify spelling, following Webster's dictionary, and use the same spelling for the noun and verb. In traditional British English, to verb uses S, 'to 'practise', but the noun has c, the usual practice'.) 

Outdoors
You won't have time when photographing a moving or living object such as an insect or passing car, so practise in advance likely situations.
1 Stand at a window watching traffic. Practise taking photo through a window to avoid getting your reflection or the street behind you when photographing through shop windows when window shopping or taking Christmas displays.

2 Go into the garden or park to photograph objects on the ground such as snails, or on a pond.

Indoors
Turn off the overhead light.
Move and photograph near a window which creates light all over the object.
Lean forward so your shadow covers enough of the object to leave just a small lighter contrast at the top of your photo which you can crop out.
Ask somebody else to hold an umbrella above you to mask out the overhead light. A white umbrella will cast light. The bigger the umbrella, the more options you have. When buying an umbrella, remember a white one would be handy when taking photos. In a studio a large white umbrella is used to create even light on a portrait. The umbrella is fixed on a tripod and can be tilted.

Light, Dark and Silhouettes
However, you might deliberately cut out light, for example, to create a silhouette. If standing with your subject's back to a window, their face is all in shadow, which is no good. However, if they stand sideways against the light (in French called contre jour) you get the profile of the forehead and nose and lips which can be interesting.

Ask an expert in your family. I did and was told:

Parallel Lines
Move the camera to one side or away from an object on a table. However, this may distort the picture by changing the parallel lines.

Edit distorted parallel lines with an option called perspective.

We bought a photo from a professional who took photos of the interior and exterior of Guildhall. Using a camera tilted up (to get the tops of buildings, columns, rooftops and spires), everything was leaning.

You might choose to leave a photo like this. Alternatively, you might leave it or do it deliberately to create a sense of being small and dominated by buildings looming over you.

Buying and Editing
Your own eye sees this but with a camera it is distorted. We paid for the photo we liked the most and downloaded it. Afterwards, having downloaded the photo we have paid for (which now has the watermark removed) we can correct and edit it ourselves.

Credits and Conditions
When loading up you might wish to check what the conditions are. Wikipedia has various conditions chosen by the original photographer, which may be free use including giving them credit, or simply using it, either allowing you to edit photos as you like, sometimes not changing it because you might distort it and this could reflect badly on the reputation of the photographer who created the original image.

Credits For Photographer and Editor
I generally put, 'photo taken by ...' (name of photographer), edited by ... (my name). This gives me credit for improvements. However, the photographer might disagree that my version is better, in which case to protect them and protect myself I have made it clear that there's another version by the original photographer.

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