FOREGROUND INTEREST
Foreground tricks
Perspective Power
Including foreground interest in
your composition will give your
landscapes a sense of scale and
depth, but if we like we can
skew this by exaggerating
the perspective.
To do this we simply need a
wide angle lens. When we bring
the lens in very close to parts of
the foreground, like the little
shelf of rock here, we can make
these details look unnaturally
large. Here the combination of a
20mm focal length and a very
low camera angle makes this
small step of a rock look
almost like a looming cliff-face.
Keep in mind that we need
these close-up details to be
sharp, and the closer our point
of focus is to the camera, theless depth of field we will have.
As such, it might be a struggle
to achieve front-to-back
sharpness across the scene.
If this is the case, you can try
focus-stacking. Focus on the
closest point and take a shot,
then adjust the focus ring a bit
and take another. Continue until
sharpness is recorded across
the scene, then combine the
sharp parts later in Photoshop
with the Auto-Blend command.
The latest Nikons – like the
D850 used here – have an
in-built focus-stacking feature
that automatically adjusts the
focus point for you.Kit needed
- Wide angle lens
Exposure: 1/200 sec, f/16, ISO100Exposure: 1/200 sec, f/16, ISO100Layered landscapes
Try and look for ‘layered
landscapes’ like this with a
clearly defined foreground
(yellow grass), mid-ground (red
bush) and background (castle
and sky). When framing up your
foreground interest move
around and experiment with
the composition.
The secondary image
displays all of the same
elements, but the balance is all
wrong, and the subject feels
isolated in the top right cornerof the composition. By contrast,
using a lower camera angle
pushes the long grass upwards
in the frame so that it breaks
up the sky a little bit. When
shooting a frame with close-up
details and distant scenery, use
a narrower aperture, like f/16,
for maximum depth of field in
order to try keep everything
nice and sharp.Kit needed
- Wide angle lens