The most important thing about taking pictures is learning to use the foreground to tell a story
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The most important thing about taking pictures is learning to use the foreground to tell a story
As we all know, one of the biggest obstacles in photography is that when you are faced with a three-dimensional scene with a grand sense of three dimensions, but only in a two-dimensional way to record it, often losing the depth of the scene formal scene soul. In order to revive the three-dimensional sense of the original real scene, we can create a deep sense of the photo by adding the foreground.
When we take a photo, our passion naturally falls on the subject and ignores the other elements that stand between the lens and the subject, which can be used as a foreground to create unexpected effects. Similar to other elements of photographic composition, the foreground uses its own shapes, lines, and graphics to guide the viewer’s eye to flow rhythmically through the photograph, and is often used to enhance the visual impact of a photograph.
What is the prospect?
When you are faced with a spectacular natural scene, you can usually divide the scene into three parts: foreground, middle, and background. For example, in the scene below, the colorful bush is in the foreground, the pond is in the middle, and the forest in the distance is in the background.
Although the distance between foreground, medium and background may not always be so harmonious, they must be connected to each other. When you think of a photograph you can think of it this way, suppose your photograph is an opera stage, the background in the photograph is the stage set, it provides a main tone for the whole stage and creates the environment, the place where the story takes place, all the story unfolds in this general background; The center of the stage is the middle of the picture, where all the stories will take place; The final foreground is the part closest to the audience, similar to the position of the orchestra in an opera, is the easiest to hear and observe, and the foreground usually reveals more detail.
However, not all photos have these three parts. Some photos only have foreground and background, while others are completely flat with no relationship between front and back.
How to use the prospect properly?
Make sure to include some interesting elements in the foreground. Don’t let the foreground fall into the banal. Try putting people, trees, boats, flowers, rocks, or anything else that comes close to you in the foreground. Their addition awakens the “depth” of your photos and gives them a virtual three-dimensional feel.
When crafting your photo, if you feel that your photo looks too flat and lacks dimension, you can add depth of field to your photo by introducing the foreground, it all depends on what kind of effect you want to create. You can choose to put something in the foreground yourself, but most of the time we look for readily available and interesting elements around the scene to use as the foreground, or we can change the camera’s Angle of view by shooting at a higher or lower Angle, or from the side of the scene.
For example, in the photo below, which features a group of oaks, the oaks are arranged lengthwise. If you shot this row of oaks from the front, they would all be the same distance, focal length, and size in the picture, which would be too flat and boring to look at. However, if you change your perspective slightly and shoot from the side, you get a whole new world. In the new composition, the oak tree is shown from near to far, and the size of the oak tree changes in an orderly manner due to perspective. When you show a picture like this to someone else, their eyes will immediately fall on the foreground, the largest oak tree, and then they will gradually move away from the picture, and the depth of the picture will be fully revealed.
Similarly, you can lower your camera’s view and allow flowers and rocks on the ground to join you in the foreground, which will do the same thing to create depth of field.
Similar to other elements in composition, we add foreground on the premise that it will add impact to our picture. If it doesn’t help us tell the story better, or even ruin the harmonious scene and distract the audience from the subject, we shouldn’t add foreground to the picture. Keep in mind that everything in the photo is intended to serve the subject.
Sometimes the foreground doesn’t need to be complicated, and there are many examples where simple graphics or lines can create unexpected effects. The ground figure in the image above is a good foreground, and it leads us naturally to the modern style church that is the subject of the photo. In addition, you can use extended walls, special materials, and other interesting elements to find the right foreground for your photos.
All in all, arranging your composition before you take a photo, and boldly adding interesting foreground elements in front of your subject, is a very effective way to make your photo “Outstanding” and more three-dimensional, which is obviously very useful for photography enthusiasts who aspire to landscape photography.
