8 Tips to enhance your storytelling by removing distractions from your photos

However much my photographer heart longs for order, life with a kindergartener and toddler is anything but neat and tidy. As a mom, I want to capture my boys’ authentic childhood on camera. But as an artist, I strive to create clean, uncluttered images. It’s a constant balance between representing their true story and creating images that make my heart sing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I capture our daily mess all the time: the mud, the strewn toys, the pillow forts. It’s a big part of their story. But I am mindful of all the elements I include in my images. Is the mess part of the story for the image or does it draw away from the story? Does each component add to the intention of the shot, or is it a distraction?

A distraction breaks the connection with the viewer by pulling their eye away from the subject and story. Our brains are hard-wired to filter out distractions in a real-life scene before us, but when you take a photo, you bring the world into a 2D space. Suddenly that once innocuous blue water bottle on the table is screaming for attention. In an image, our eyes naturally gravitate toward bursts of color or pops or light. Inessential clutter — like a garbage can or random people — can disconnect the viewer from the focus of moment.

To help the viewer connect with my images as intended, I strive to eliminate — or at least minimize — distractions from the scene. Life with young kids may be chaotic, but I’ve developed strategies to keep the chaos out of the frame while simultaneously capturing their authentic stories.

Here are my eight tips for mindfully removing distractions from your photos, either in camera or in post processing. Each tip includes examples of my thought process when photographing my own boys.

Removing distracting elements in camera:

I try to make my images as clean as possible in camera. Simply not having distracting elements in your frame is usually easier than dealing with them in post. Here are some tips for removing distractions from your photos in camera.

1. Remove objects.

This may seem obvious, but a simple way to avoid distractions in your frame is to remove them from the real-life scene. You may not have time to remove an object before the moment passes, so before removing anything, I always take a “safe” shot of the scene as it is. That way, if my kids move on or the light is fleeting, I have the moment documented.

Then, I’ll start throwing things out of the frame. And I mean throwing. I am not picking up; I’m chucking them to the side to be dealt with later. That orange sock, gone. That ugly plastic toy, goodbye. A large part of me would like to throw these things in the trash, but I’ll settle for simply casting them out of my frame.

Example:

In the photos below, my son was playing in the kitchen sink with pretty light behind him. I took a few shots to capture the moment and then removed the object in the sink and the soap to clean up the frame. Although the soap does work with the story, the bright color pulls the viewer’s eye away from the hands. In my final shot, the focus is entirely on the hands and the soapy counter.

2. Crop creatively.

Often the scene in question is too messy or simply not able to be cleaned. In that case, you can play with creative crops to tell your story while removing distractions from your photo.

You can zoom in to fill the frame with your subject, thus cutting out the distractions. Or, my personal favorite, focus on just a piece of the subject. I love zooming in to my boys’ hands or feet. I can tell a story with their limbs, while keeping the frame free of any distracting objects.

Example:

My son was playing in this puddle at a busy dog park. There were lots of people, dogs, and fences around, but by focusing on his feet and the puddle, I was able to clearly tell the story while keeping the busy atmosphere out of the frame.

3. Change your angle.

You can also change your angle to avoid distracting elements. Person behind your subject when you’re shooting toward the left? Scoot right and perhaps they’ll be out of frame. Colorful painting on the wall that draws the eye from the story? Make yourself a little taller and cut it out of the frame.

One of my favorite angles to shoot in a messy space is directly from above. This perspective allows you to focus entirely on the activity at hand while keeping unnecessary clutter from view.

Example:

I almost always photograph art projects from above. This angle allows me to see the project and the story of creating it, while simultaneously cutting out the rest of the room. We usually do these projects in one corner of our dining room table. This is also where my son has remote kindergarten and where toys pile up throughout the day (It is not, however, where we have dinner. But that’s a story for another day). Just outside of this clean frame there are piles of papers, pencils and Legos, but because of the creative angle you would never know.

4. Block the distraction.

Sometimes the distraction is right in the middle of your frame. There’s no way to remove it, crop-it out, or change your angle. In that case, you may be able to use other elements of your image to block the distraction. This can get tricky when your subjects are moving, but if you’re patient and time things just right, your subjects can block the unnecessary element from view.

Examples:

In the first image below, there was a car parked at the end of this beautiful row of apple trees. To capture my boys walking together without the car in the shot, I changed my angle slightly and waited just a few steps until my oldest was blocking the distraction. Sometimes removing distractions from your photos just takes patience and a trained eye.

Here, my boys were playing with Daddy’s guitar. I needed to capture this sweet moment. Rather than try to clean up the nightstand, I simply closed the door a little, thus blocking our wireless router and cords from view.

5. Get creative with light and focus.

Often when photographing my boys, mess is part of the story but it’s not the focus of the story. In these cases, I don’t want to remove or crop-out the mess, but rather deemphasize it. Creative use of light and focus is a great way to include elements in the frame without having the secondary elements draw the viewer’s attention away from the main subject of the image.

Example of minimizing distractions with light and shadow:

When my boys built themselves a mountain of couch cushions to the window sill, I wanted to capture the mess of the scene, but keep the focus on their climbing. I was able to do this by allowing the room around them to fall into shadow. You can still tell there are toys all over the ground and shelves, but they are a subtle part of the story that does not distract from the main plot.

Example of removing distractions with selective focus:

My kindergartener’s remote school area is a mess, no matter how much I attempt to keep it neat. I wanted a portrait of him in his space that included the mess, but wasn’t about the mess. So, I grabbed my Lensbaby Velvet 56 and found an angle where I could frame him amidst the Legos, water bottles, and pencils. Because the secondary elements are blurred and in shadow, the viewer’s eye is drawn to his gaze and not distracted by the surrounding clutter.

How to decide what elements to remove and what to keep?

When composing images in camera, think of it as a puzzle. What is the intention and story of the image you want to create? What elements can you choose to include or eliminate to enhance that story? Do you want to capture a portrait of your child? Or do I want to tell the story of the activity they are involved in? Is mess part of that activity? If it is part of the activity, how much of that mess do you want to include? It takes practice to see the scene before you and visualize what potential distractions might exist, but as with most things in photography (and life, for that matter), with a little training it eventually becomes second nature.

Here’s an example of my in-camera thought-process for a portrait of my son.

When my son was almost two, I desperately wanted a portrait of him in his crib. One day when he woke from nap in a super happy mood, I grabbed my camera. I started with a quick “safe shot” with the room as is. It’s cute and captured the scene, but for this image I wanted a classic portrait. He was still happily singing and jumping so I had time to change my shot by removing distractions. Here’s what I did:

• First, I removed the monitor and the blankets from his crib.
• Next, I zoomed in to remove the unnecessary elements on either side of the frame.
• Then, I changed my angle, shooting a little from above and cropping the paintings out of the frame.
• And finally, I removed his striped shirt, which I found too busy for the intention of the image I was creating.

As you can see in the second image, removing distractions from your photos can make such a huge difference in the story you are trying to tell. With a few simple adjustments, I changed the overall intention of my image, creating the classic portrait I envisioned.

Removing distractions from your photos in post processing:

When removing distractions from your photos in camera isn’t possible, use post processing. I’m not one to spend hours toiling away at edits, but a few quick Photoshop tricks can clean up a frame and enhance the intention of an image.

6. Crop out distractions.

The easiest way to remove unnecessary elements from your frame is to simply crop them out. Road sign drawing your eye near the edge of the frame? See if the composition still works when you cut it out. Subject holding an obnoxiously colored object that’s not part of the story? How about a close-up? Cropping is always my first editing choice for removing distracting elements that pull away from my story.

Example:

We were at the park on a beautiful foggy morning. I wanted a photo of my son swinging in the fog, but there was this mound of tires just behind the swing-set. Because I needed to stand on a bench for height, the 40mm lens (Canon EF 40mm F2.8 STM) I had with me wasn’t long enough to crop out the distracting elements in-camera. I composed the shot so I could crop in post, highlighting just my son and the beautifully foggy trees behind him.

7. Convert to black and white.

If an element is distracting because of its color, but you still want it in the frame, converting the image to black and white can often maintain the story without removing anything.

Example:

Here, I loved this scene of my son playing with his neighbor and their dog, but the friend’s bright red jacket monopolizes the viewer’s attention. In black and white, the focus is now on my son, while his friend becomes a less distracting part of the scene.

8. Use editing tools in Photoshop.

If all else fails, removing distractions from your photos in Adobe Photoshop is a great option. I use a combination of the healing brush and content-aware fill to edit distractions from my images.

Healing Brush

Sometimes, distracting elements are simply little bits of color or bokeh on an otherwise clean area. Things like a leaf on the ground or a blade of grass that catches the light differently than the rest of the image can draw the eye away from your story. When looking at my photos on my computer, I always do a scan of the frame to see if there are any spots that catch my attention.

Example:

In this shot, there were a few lone flowers in the background and a dark leaf on the ground that stood out against the green grass. By removing them with the healing brush in Photoshop, I’ve refined the image to ensure the viewer is entirely focused on the action in the foreground.

Content-aware fill

When I need to remove larger objects, I use the content-aware fill option in Photoshop. This nifty editing tool allows you to select the object you want removed, and Photoshop does the rest. It samples the area around the object and fills in the space with the appropriate colors.

Example:

I find light switches very distracting. They are usually white and tend to draw the viewer’s eye. Luckily, with content-aware fill it’s super simple to remove them. In this image, I also removed the corner of the table in the foreground because it reflects light and draws attention away from my son.

Follow along with the editing video below to see how I edited this shot.

Example of editing with the healing brush + content aware to remove distracting elements:

This image was a little more complicated to edit. I used a mixture of the healing brush and more advanced features of the content-aware fill tool in Photoshop to remove the frames from the wall.

Watch me edit this image in the video below.

Thank you for following along with my 8 tips for mindfully removing distractions from your photos. I hope you now feel equipped to capture the action of life, while simultaneously avoiding elements that pull away from the intention of the stories you want to tell. Happy shooting!

Photos by Leah Barad

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