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How to use foreground interest
Techniques
24 October 2007 12:17
It’s all too easy to concentrate on sweeping views and beautiful sky when you’re shooting landscapes. But one of the most important features of successful landscape composition lies at your feet. The foreground of your images can add depth, interest and structure to your shots, and is one of the most useful composition techniques you can use.
By including something in the foreground, you can give the image a much bolder sense of depth, helping entice the viewer into the picture.
From rocks and foliage to man-made structures, you can use almost any object to add interest to the foreground. The key to using it successfully is to use the right viewpoint: get low down to make the object loom larger, or position the camera so the foreground effectively frames the view beyond, or perhaps creates a lead-in line that points to it.
Wide-angle lenses allow you to get close to the foreground subject, yet still include plenty of the scene beyond. As you’re so close to the subject, even small changes in the position of the camera can make all the difference between having the foreground help frame the view or dominate the image too much.
A small aperture means you’ll be able to keep the whole scene in focus thanks to great depth-of-field.
For this shot of Stanage Edge, we used a rocky outcrop in the foreground to make the image much stronger. The rock helps to lead your eye from the bottom of the frame, along the ridge and to the focal point of the distant rock at the top of the image.
