Among all the composition methods, there is one that is the most common and very easy to produce, which is foreground composition.
Foreground composition techniques can help us enhance our sense of form, obtain images with richer layers, greater information content, or symbolic significance.
Sometimes the prospect as the subject and the original subject as the background can have a miraculous effect. Sometimes, using the original subject as the foreground and the background as the subject can have unexpected effects.
The foreground and background are not fixed, mastering this part proficiently will broaden the composition ideas?
What is foreground composition method
The scenery before the focus point is called the foreground, and the scenery after the focus point is called the background. Usually, the focus is on the subject, which is our point of interest. Whether the foreground or background is clear or blurred does not affect whether they become foreground or background.
The foreground can make the image more rich and layered in depth, and sometimes it can also be used to increase the sense of form and information content.
The tense atmosphere of barbed wire
During my filming in the Middle East, the local situation was unstable. Looking down at the Old City of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, one cannot help but exclaim: This place is full of holiness and suffering! Approach
I shot through the barbed wire fence in the corner of the wall, and the tense atmosphere suddenly came out. The camera should be as close as possible to the barbed wire fence, making the narrow gaps appear larger, so as to expose the golden roof on the Temple Mount and provide a place for the slanting clouds in the sky to rest.
Wire mesh, an object with thorns all over its body and full of vigilance, is a good symbol. Many war photographers particularly use the strong psychological suggestion brought by barbed wire to achieve the effect of showcasing the tense and turbulent situation.
Compare photos without foreground and feel the difference in atmosphere.
This was taken in a small village, where baskets hung outside the house with a strong sense of form, arranged in a staggered manner on the wall. It reminds me of the bronze ware hanging on the wall of the second floor of Lhasa Magi Ami. First, I took a neat and evenly distributed photo facing the wall.
Then I changed my angle, stepped back a bit, tilted a bit, and used the fruit hanging next to me as the foreground. Take photos of the baskets on the wall through the gaps between these fruits. As mentioned earlier, the foreground adds a sense of form and space, while also adding some color.
The originally quiet movie suddenly became very lively. This change is achieved by utilizing changes in distance and angle, forcefully adding a prospect. This is the ability to read live scenes, to learn how to use the elements of the scene to recombine the picture.
Choose a position, whether you are old enough or not, and whether your eyesight is sharp enough or ruthless. Let's start practicing by shooting these simple and motionless images!
The prospect of icing
This photo is taken at the third largest waterfall in the world; — Taken at Niagara Falls in Canada. Unlike other grand waterfall photos, this one was taken in the harsh winter, with all the plants in the foreground frozen over. The series of videos' So I Shot It This Way 'also happened to shoot an episode of the program, which can be used as a reference.
This is not a particularly common scene, so I chose to capture frozen plants as well. If there were no such prospects, it would be similar to what was captured in summer.
After adding this prospect, the seasonal feeling of ice and snow will emerge, and more viewers will be attracted to the magical ice columns.
This photo was taken by me deliberately stepping back and using the railing as a foreground. Because the ice form on the railing is good and relatively rare, and there are only a few days each year to see such a scene, it is necessary to showcase this unique natural landscape.
In order to capture both the railing and the waterfall, I deliberately retracted the tripod and raised it to the highest height to shoot downwards. This photo was not easily obtained, and there is a filming scene from that time in the video 'Niagara Falls Winter Shooting'. You can refer to it.
The prospect brings information
The fabrics in front are the foreground of the photo, which already has a certain sense of form, extending radially towards the middle and focusing on the vendor. There are more fabrics around that present different directions of lines, presenting a semi enclosed structural line. These lines not only convey a sense of form, but also contain information about the person's profession and environment.
Do not capture any other cluttered elements in the composition, only leave useful information. The prospects here may seem rich, but they are still relatively pure. The so-called subtraction does not refer to the emptiness in the background or foreground, leaving only the subject, rich but pure images, which is also a difficult point in practicing composition at the beginning.
The Eye catching Effect of ProspectsMany people may ask why the character in the lower left corner only has half a face?
The person in the lower left corner of this photo is the effect of foreground blurring. I intentionally only took half of the face to emphasize the feeling of the eyes. But I didn't focus on his eyes. It may seem strange at first glance, but sometimes it can bring a more attractive visual experience than taking a clear picture, which requires continuous experimentation to grasp.
Fully utilizing the foreground will not only give your photos a sense of hierarchy, but also bring good new ideas to your work.
