A method of identifying a particular background feature in a digital image, and using such feature to identify images in a collection of digital images that are of interest, includes using the digital image for determining one or more background region(s), with the rest of the image region being the non-background region; analyzing the background region(s) to determine one or more features which are suitable for searching the collection; and using the one or more features to search the collection and identifying those digital images in the collection that have the one or more features.