Visualisation means more than just seeing the raw ingredients of the shot. It also means being aware of the differences between the way the camera sees and the way the eye sees. We’ve already alluded to depth of field, and to the way the camera deals with movement, with colours, and with big differences in brightness.
One of the most important factors remains the ‘mental zoom lens.’ Physically, the human eye has an almost fixed focal length. It’s the brain which can switch almost instantaneously from ‘seeing’ a wide-angle view to a narrow ‘telephoto’ one. This ability is very powerful, and very useful to the photographer, as long as you’re aware of what’s going on.
Pinnacles, Namburg National Park, Perth, Western Australia (Chiz) OK, you tell us, where’s the ‘subject’ in this shot?
Different angles
Landscape photography largely deals with fixed objects. We could move the odd pebble, but not a tree or a mountain. But you can always move the camera.
Switching lenses, or using a zoom, is just one way to change the framing of a shot. Even with the simplest of cameras, with one fixed lens, you can move forward, back, left, right, up and down. Try all of these options, and observe the results carefully.
There is every difference between snapping on a longer lens to take a ‘closer’ picture of a scene, and actually walking forward into it. If there’s a tree fifty metres away and a mountain ten kilometres away, zooming in will enlarge both of them equally within your frame. Walking forward 25 metres makes no difference to the apparent size of the mountain, but makes the tree look much larger. Zooms and telephotos are wonderful things, but they don’t replace the need to move.
And as you move, remember the third dimension. Why take every shot from normal eye-level? Scrambling up a boulder or outcrop can expand your view considerably, while getting low draws in more foreground detail. We’re outdoor people: who cares about grubby knees?
Foregrounds and panoramas
Many cameras have a ‘panoramic’ option, which – usually – allows you to ‘stitch’ several frames together to produce a wider view than the lens can achieve in a single shot.
A good panorama can create a great sense of space. However, we still see a lot of ‘panoramas’ which apparently do no more than chop off the top and bottom of the picture. This normally cuts out the sky and the foreground, just leaving the middle to far distance. This may satisfy those deluded souls who think you can see it all from a car window, but the active outdoor person is aware of, and cares about, more than just ‘the view’. When shooting panoramas, it’s usually best to pre-focus on the area you want in sharpest focus, then switch the focus to manual as auto-focus may find alternative points of focus in successive shots.
Cabo Calheta, Porto Santo, Madeira Islands (Jon) Perspective changes with position, but changing the focal length is often the next step
‘Foreground’ is not just another bit of photographic jargon, or a goody-bag you can mine to improve your framing. The foreground is where you are. It’s where you walk or climb or bike. The foreground is grit under your boot soles, the icy stream you’ve just crossed, the crystal glinting on the corner of a rock, a bright mound of moss campion. The foreground is what says ‘I was there’.
Jeffrey Hill, Lancashire (Jon) ‘Foreground’ is where you are
To make the most of foregrounds, there’s no substitute for a wide-angle lens. (See Focal length and angle of view for what constitutes a ‘wide-angle’ on different camera formats). Wide-angles can encompass both the broad sweep of a landscape and the vital foreground detail. However, they’re also pretty good at taking in things you don’t want as well as those you do, so think about the whole frame. Keep it simple!
Foregrounds are also a great way to enhance a sense of scale. It’s funny, but it’s true: if you want a photo of a mountain that gives a sense of its awesome size, filling the picture with it may not be the best way. For most people, especially those with limited experience of mountains, a shot of a peak in isolation, without context, is hard to ‘read’.
Including a relatively familiar object, like a tree, helps us make sense of the unfamiliar. Human figures are also ideal for this, because we all know how big – or rather, how small – human beings are. Making the figure really tiny in the frame can be very effective – as long as it’s still recognisably human, not just a small black dot.
Helvellyn, Lake District (Jon) Even really tiny figures can be very significant in the shot, especially when they appear to be at the focal point
So how do you ensure that you get strong foregrounds in your pictures? Before you lift the camera, start looking. Flowering plants, interestingly shaped rocks, fence lines, trees, shrubs can all make good foregrounds. But beware – not all foreground objects work equally well! In particular, be wary of random objects such as a tree branch with no connection to the rest of the image: it will usually look more like an annoying distraction. The foreground needs to relate to the background in some way. If you can see the trunk of the tree, and the ground in which it’s rooted, which perhaps connects to the view beyond, it can work much better than just a branch apparently hovering in mid-air. It’s a complicated topic, and what works for one person may not work for another, but it’s definitely something to consider.
Rocks make such good foregrounds that in some circles they are referred to as JCBs – for ‘Joe Cornish boulders’ –after Joe Cornish, one of the UK’s foremost landscape photographers, who tended to home in on convenient boulders for foreground interest.
Some foregrounds are fairly incidental, others may become the dominant element in the shot. To really concentrate on the foreground, you usually need to work at close range and let it fill the frame. Very often the best way to get close is to get low. Sit, kneel, crouch, crawl – do whatever it takes. We take many pictures from a crouching or kneeling position, not because we’re lazy – all that crouching and getting up again is harder work than shooting everything from standing eye-level. It’s so we can get closer to the figurative eye-level of that butterfly on a thistle, or clump of grass, or hoar-frost encrusted boulder.
Just be aware it can occasionally lead to embarrassment; both of us have had concerned strangers asking if we’re alright as they find us lying on the ground; and your so-called friends may find it amusing to pretend they’re about to put their boot on your head!
Really wide lenses let you work very close to foreground objects. Even tiny shifts in your camera position can have a big effect on where or how large they appear, while making negligible difference to distant skylines. Get close, get involved, but keep looking at the whole frame.
Middle management
Of course the real world is not divided neatly into ‘foreground’ and ‘background’. An image consisting solely of two disparate segments with no connection between them will often look odd, like a Photoshopped collision of two unrelated images. The bit in between is easily overlooked, but it’s what connects the foreground interest with the wider background landscape.
However, striving to ensure a strong middle-ground in every shot can make the image just too full and complex. The middle-ground can often be hinted at or suggested, while strong lines – rivers, paths,