We were undeterred at Shugborough even though we had to work most of the day with no power. this meant that Phil had to present the course from memory, but thankfully we had the power back in the afternoon and we could look at our pictures.
One of the things that we try to encourage people to do is to get low enough to the subject. This has two effects: firstly it tends to fill the frame with the subject and make it look more important, so that the viewer knows what they are supposed to look at. The second effect is to change the distance in the background so that the background is a different distance away and therefore out of focus. This makes the shot a lot more effective:
It’s not something you have to do all the time - but it is something that’s worth thinking about: