Trying to create the illusion that only the center of the page is scrolling down

So I’m making my portfolio project right now and am trying to work something out. If you look at the portfolio example or at say IGN you can see that it looks like only the center of the page where the text and images are at is being scrolled past and that the rest is standing still. I’m wondering how to do this. My two main ideas are either frames, which aren’t that good and can mess up when changing size. Or setting a background then having everything else in coloumns ontop of that background. Anyone got any ideas?

Set the background-position for the image container as fixed.

(some random blog)