When making a person’s portrait, people often end up with a photo like the one above. Instead, they are looking for an image like the one below.

Fuji X-E2, 55-200mm, ISO 1000, ƒ/4.8, 1/500

As you can easily see, the background in the first photo is quite distracting and competes with the face of the person. In the second photo, some people might even say the subject just “pops” out of the picture.

Notice the camera settings are identical.

The difference is the distance the subject is to the background. For example, in the first photo, the person is right next to the background, and in the next one, the subject is 30 feet away from the background.

If you have a very distracting background like the brick wall, move the subject very far away to be able to throw the background out of focus.

Even if the background is a plain solid color wall, pull the person away from it, so you do not see the wall’s texture.