Paddy

I was looking through some landscapes on the internet the other day taken in my beloved Peak District, my childhood, and adult, playground. I cannot remember the guys name or the site, I just happened across it by accident, but nearly all the images had one thing in common. A powerful foreground with the hills in the distance shown in great sweeps of grass,rocks and sky and it got me thinking about how this is achieved.

Now, we have all heard of ‘Perspective’

[ perspective |pəˈspɛktɪv|1 the art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the right impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other when viewed from a particular point. • a picture drawn in such a way, esp. one appearing to enlarge or extend the actual space, or to give the effect of distance. Is just one dictionary version of it.

This is what the photographer had achieved. A rock in the foreground of his image appeared large and dominant against the backdrop of hills yet, I guess, the rock was no more than 4 feet across and maybe 3 feet high and the mountain behind it (Kinder Scout) rose at least 2000 feet high. So given the vast difference in these two subjects, how do we make the smaller of the two look so much stronger and bold in the image. Well, it is all down to perspective.

Most of us on this forum have a camera that will enable us to zoom into an object to make it bigger. Therefor the logic is that to take this powerful landscape with this rock in the foreground looking so big, would be to zoom in on it. Sadly this would not work because we would be zooming in on everything which would make the background bigger too, in fact so big, it wouldn’t fit in the frame.

In fact, the way to get the foreground prominent in a picture is to do the opposite of what sounds logical. The best way is to get as wide an angle as possible to ensure you get the majesty of the rolling hills and mountains. There is a really big problem with that, the rock we want to stand proud in our foreground now looks like a beach pebble poking it’s head over the grass.

So, we have a huge rock and no mountains or a vista of mountains and a pebble. What do we do next? Well thankfully, we were born with our on Zoom equipment, it is called our feet. What we do is get really close to the rock with our wide angle and because it is so close it will look bigger. The mountains, relatively speaking, are so far away that walking a few feet to the rock does not make any difference to how they look. So what we are doing is using focal lengths to alter the perspective of the shot as in the dictionary version above. Now this is ok but in reality how does it work. Well, there is a huge amount of mathematical theorem surrounding the use of optics, focal length and perspective which I often read if I cannot sleep, so far I have never got past halfway down page one before I am snoring.... so I thought a simple little demo might help to show that it does work, even if it doesn’t explain how it works.

Rather than increase my carbon footprint by heading off to the Peak district to show this, I put the kettle on and while it boiled I shot the following sequence to prove it does have an effect that can be used to our advantage. Now you will see I took a lot of time setting this up so don’t laugh. The idea in this is not to demonstrate my superb photographic ability (pause for nods of approval) it is simply to demonstrate that the theory works.

Ok, the first six shots are the lazy way, and no use to the landscape photographer, of making the foreground bigger. Please note for comparison I am using a garden fairy, gorgeous model that she is, and in the distance, the bird table and general garden background.

All of the first six were taken with the front of the lens 14 feet from the fairy. I have used manual focus and all shots are at f16 aperture. Above each picture is the focal length as it appears on my camera. Nikon cameras have a 1.5 conversion factor to get the equivalent of using a 35mm camera so, the widest which is 18mm is the same as a 27 mm on a 35mm camera. The reason I add this is that if you look up on the internet or even some books still, they will usually talk about focal lengths as used on 35mm cameras.

Lets see how it works then using zoom:

18mm


35mm


55mm


85mm


130mm


200mm


Now you can see from these shots what is happening. I am getting a much bigger foreground but look at the background. Pay particular attention to the bird table which, in the last shot, has almost disappeared. What is happening that we certainly don't want is that the relative size between my foreground (rock) and background (mountain) are not changing that much, they are just both getting bigger. Ignore, for this example, the Depth of Field (DoF). I know that I could have got more focus on the background, but not that much more at the longer focal lengths, by re setting the focus point. For consistency I decided to always focus on the fairy. However, I think you will agree that using a zoom to make my foreground bigger is not that effective.

The next three shots demonstrate how, by using a wide angle lens and getting closer to the foreground subject, I can make it more dominant in the picture while retaining the wide sweep of the magnificent mountains in the background.... well the garden fence anyway.

These were all taken at 18mm focal length but moving closer to the fairy

18mm front of lens 2 feet away


18mm front of lens 1 foot away


Finally, 18mm front of lens 6 inches away


What you should be able to see quite clearly in these last three is that although the fairy gets much bigger and prominent in the picture, the size of the bird table (my mountain) has not altered much at all as the moving forward of just a few inches makes no difference to the perspective of far subjects but makes a dramatic difference to the near one.

I hope this is of some use, quite willing to take questions should you have them or credit card details.............

If you feel inspired by this example then go out and find a suitable subject and shoot a landscape with something close up and prominent in the foreground. Could be a rock, a fence post, even a person. However, don't use a fairy as I have been emailed from SPOF (Society for the Protection Of Fairies) regarding my blatant exploitation of this often abused species......

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