Digital Camera - Ken Gilbert

CORE SKILLS
FOREGROUND
ATTRACTIONS
Transformyourlandscapesbyusing naturally
occurring lines and objects to draw in the eye…
However strong the mid-ground and
background in your landscape shot,
it will fall at the first hurdle if it lacks
foreground interest.There’s nothing particularly
complex about this element of photocomposition
theory; it’s simply about ensuring
there’s an object or natural feature in your
landscape image that strikes the viewer’s eye
and leads it into the shot. It’s got to be in the
foreground, and it’s got to be interesting or
eye-catching – in other words, aesthetically
pleasing. That’s whyyou tend to see mossy
boulders or flowery banks placed in the front of
the best landscape compositions, rather than
scruffy hedges or hijacked Tesco trolleys.
However, placing boulders in the foreground
of all your landscape shots will soon get boring.
Read on for some essential tips for interesting
foregrounds, with exclusive insight from Italian
pro Paolo De Faveri (who took this image).
D-SLRCAMERASKILLS
ESSENTIAL SLR
SET-UP TIPS
Tweak your SLRfor
killer compositions
Switch to Manual
For total exposure control,
don’t rely on your SLR’s auto
modes –switch to Manual mode.
You’re going to need an artful
combination of slow shutter
speed to create the milky water
effect and asmall aperture(f/22)
to create adeep depth of field.
Try hyperfocal focusing
Use the basic principles of
hyperfocal focusing to get a shot
that’s sharp from foreground to
background. You’ll need to make
calculations, but as a rough rule
of thumb set your lens to MF (or
M) and focus on a point roughly
one third into the scene.
How low can you go…
For maximum image quality, you
want to keep light sensitivity (ISO)
to the lowest possible setting to
reduce noise. Typically this is ISO
100. Low ISO might mean slow
exposures, which is ideal for
a shot like the one on the left –
but youwill need astable tripod.
DigitalCamera July2010
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