THE BIG PROJECT
Foreground tricks
Line of beauty
A bold line that runs from the
foreground toward your distant
subject is a sure-fire way to
enhance your landscape
compositions with relative ease.
As soon as you start looking for
leading lines you’ll find natural
examples all around! After all,
the coastline itself is essentiallya giant leading line, but you can
also usually find bold lines to
work with in rock pools and
other natural rock formations.
The resulting image is one of
the classic views of Bamburgh,
but it’s not the most original;
the other shots here are less
common. This demonstrates
just another added
benefit of
searching out
foreground
interest – it helps
you find fresher
and potentially
more exciting
angles in those
particularly
well-photographed
locations.Kit needed
- Wide angle lens
- Tripod
Exposure: 6 secs, f/16, ISO100Classic Rock!
As far as foreground interest
goes, this compositional
technique is about as classic
and essential as a Deep Purple
medley. An attractive rock or
two in the foreground of a scene
can help give balance and depth
to the composition.
Here we’ve employed this
tried-and-tested trick, in
combination with a long
exposure of 6 secs, to blur the
water across into a creamy
delight. To do this we need aneutral density filter and a
tripod. We fit the filter (a
six-stop ND in this case) to
the front of the lens. Next, we’ll
switch to Manual mode and use
an aperture of f/16 and ISO100
(to keep the image quality),
then take a couple of test shots
to work out the correct shutter
speed you should be using.Kit needed
- Tripod
- Strong ND filter
Exposure: 6 secs, f/16, ISO100