Having an empty foreground?

[leslie1283]

Regarding this thread "Rookie Mistakes Made by Landscape Photographers" & its link,

http://www.photographytalk.com/4343-...-photographers

#1 I purposely took this photographed with some branches at the bottom as a foreground. Should I remove the centre gray branch?

#2 This photograph has no foreground. Is it an unattractive photo? Should I PP something as a foreground?


#1





#2

[FrankMi]

Regarding this thread…

http://www.photographytalk.com/4343-...-photographers

#1 I purposely took this photographed with some branches at the bottom as a foreground. Should I remove the centre gray branch?

#2 This photograph has no foreground. Is it an unattractive photo? Should I PP something as a foreground?

Hi Leslie, most photography articles on composition speak in generalities that may or may not apply evenly to all scenes. One of the biggest advantages of having something interesting in the foreground is to provide a sense of depth. If the scene is relatively flat in appearance, that can be an effective tool to use. Comparing your two images, you can see that the appearance of the second one is flatter than the first. The question isn't as much about depth as it is about how you want to composition to look.

For example, take a look at Donald's From Sea Thrift to Jura. His use of a wide angle lens to bring objects that are inches away from the vantage point with objects that are miles away provides a phenomenal sense of 'being there' through the use of detailed foreground objects.

On the other hand, this Sunrise image has nothing in the foreground.

It comes down to learning the tools and techniques that are available to you and applying them appropriately to the scene at hand. The 'rules' of composition are there for a reason. They work quite well in most circumstances so they provide an excellent starting point to learn how to take interesting pictures. As your skills improve, you learn how to employ those learned techniques to get the most out of a scene, and that includes breaking the rules when it is appropriate to do so.

Here is a good 'rule' to consider for learning landscape photography. I call it Frank's Rule of Thirds for Landscapes. Have something interesting in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Should you ever break the rule? Of course!

[Shadowman]

The branch in the first is a bit distracting, how do you plan to remove it? The second image is nice, a lower angle when photographing would have removed most of the boring foreground.

[Polar01]

Leslie with image #1 the plant in the foreground does not I feel take away from the image. What is taking away is the blown sky, remember the eye travels to the brightest areas of an image IMO you needed to knock down that sky by 2 to 3 stops to make is a stronger image.

Cheers: Allan

[Manfred M]

Rule #1 in photography - Rules are meant to be broken. Actually, they are not so much rules as guidelines. The trick is to understand where and when to do so.

I have lots of effective landscape shots where I have broken that particular rule.

Let's look at landscape master Ansel Adams work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L...A_-_519861.jpg

Looks like he breaks that rule too...

[bnnrcn]

Hi Leslie, the clouds are too bright in #1 but I like the composition even with the branch in the middle

[leslie1283]

Hi Leslie, most photography articles on composition speak in generalities that may or may not apply evenly to all scenes. One of the biggest advantages of having something interesting in the foreground is to provide a sense of depth. If the scene is relatively flat in appearance, that can be an effective tool to use. Comparing your two images, you can see that the appearance of the second one is flatter than the first. The question isn't as much about depth as it is about how you want to composition to look.

For example, take a look at Donald's From Sea Thrift to Jura. His use of a wide angle lens to bring objects that are inches away from the vantage point with objects that are miles away provides a phenomenal sense of 'being there' through the use of detailed foreground objects.

On the other hand, this Sunrise image has nothing in the foreground.

It comes down to learning the tools and techniques that are available to you and applying them appropriately to the scene at hand. The 'rules' of composition are there for a reason. They work quite well in most circumstances so they provide an excellent starting point to learn how to take interesting pictures. As your skills improve, you learn how to employ those learned techniques to get the most out of a scene, and that includes breaking the rules when it is appropriate to do so.

Here is a good 'rule' to consider for learning landscape photography. I call it Frank's Rule of Thirds for Landscapes. Have something interesting in the foreground, middle ground, and background. Should you ever break the rule? Of course!

Frank,

Very helpful advice.

BTW, I just ordered my Baskin Robbins cone with extra topping.


#3

[leslie1283]

John,

How about crop the bottom?

#4

[leslie1283]

Thanks Allan.

I have edited the sky.

#5

[leslie1283]

Manfred,

Thank you.

[leslie1283]

Thanks Binnur.

[Manfred M]

Leslie - you have done something quite interesting when you look at the two images with the cattle. Just a reminder, many landscape images have a foreground, middle ground and background.

In the first image; the foreground is the meadow, the cattle are the middle ground and the mountains and sky make up the background. In the second image, where you do a fairly major crop of the bottom of the image, you end up with the cattle (and a bit of meadow) as the foreground, the mountains have become the middle ground and the sky is in the background.

You have also accomplished something else. In the original crop, the proportions have changed (in my mind to the better). Having an image divided through the middle of the image generally is not as compositionally strong as having the divisions in thirds, and that is exactly how you have divided up the image. The line between the grass and the mountains is roughly 1/3 of the way up and the dividing line between the sky and the mountains are also roughly on one of the thirds.

This seems to work better, at least to me it does.

[bnnrcn]

I like #4 ( crop) Leslie, better composition like Manfred said

[ajohnw]

I think a longer lens just including just the group of cattle would work a lot better.

The other one is spoiled for me due to exposure problems on the sky and a little by the near tree far tree tone levels which might be down to mist or where the light was coming from. That would probably look better if the sky was ok. On that one I would remove the bent tree in the middle if I could. I suspect I would crop off more of the tree to the left as well, closer to the trunk. Hard to be sure without trying it but one rule of thumb that often works on landscapes is to try and keep some balance at the edges of the shot left and right. You do have that already. I would also probably do a version where the small tree blocking the lake was cloned out with more lake. The lake is good as it does lead into the shot and gives it depth.

I don't look for rules when I look at shot, just do I like it or not and then try and figure out what gave that impression. I think that aspect is rather important on landscapes in particular.

John
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[Polar01]

Leslie I do not know what software you use for post production, however it is almost impossible to get detail back, if the area is blown as your sky. Even using Light Room or the main Photoshop program they may helped to get a little back, but if there is no data in those areas, they can not help. To prevent this you need to be aware then shooting, your histogram should have shown that you had blown highlights or even the blinkies flashing would have warned you that you have a problem. To prevent this either a at least 2-stop hard or soft GND filter or taking two images one metered for the sky and one for the foreground than combining them together in post as one image. We can do a lot of things in post production however getting data from blown areas in not one of them.

Cheers: Allan

[leslie1283]

Thanks Manfred.

[leslie1283]

Binnur,
Thank you.

[leslie1283]

John,

Thanks for your advice. I will try it.

[FrankMi]

Frank,

Very helpful advice.

BTW, I just ordered my Baskin Robbins cone with extra topping.


#3

Excellent timing on that one! I finally did get my Baseball Nut ice cream so I'm set until next spring.

[leslie1283]

Leslie I do not know what software you use for post production, however it is almost impossible to get detail back, if the area is blown as your sky. Even using Light Room or the main Photoshop program they may helped to get a little back, but if there is no data in those areas, they can not help. To prevent this you need to be aware then shooting, your histogram should have shown that you had blown highlights or even the blinkies flashing would have warned you that you have a problem. To prevent this either a at least 2-stop hard or soft GND filter or taking two images one metered for the sky and one for the foreground than combining them together in post as one image. We can do a lot of things in post production however getting data from blown areas in not one of them.

Cheers: Allan

Allan,

Actually I used PS CC to edited the sky. I can't remember how I did that.