Here’s something that occurs all too often when composing images in the field: We tend to ignore what’s right in front of our face, and instead we concentrate on accentuating the midrange and background of a shot.
That’s unfortunate for a couple of reasons. First, what lies in the foreground may be the most compelling portion of the frame. And in other instances foreground elements can help direct a viewer’s eye to key areas that lie beyond. In this eye-opening tutorial from Landscape Photography University you’ll learn how framing a scene with the foreground in mind can make or break a shot.
Instructor David Johnston is a professional landscape shooter who says, “My passion is to provide the best tips and tools to level up the success of your photography.” He fulfills that goal today with several techniques for using foregrounds to make images more compelling.
Johnston uses a number of great images to illustrates his advice. The first example is a spectacular photo with colorful buildings and a striped lighthouse close to the camera and star trails in the nighttime sky. This shot illustrates Johnston’s claim that the first thing you want to be sure of is that your foregrounds point directly to the key subject.
In this instance Johnston’s key area of emphasis is a portion of the frame where the lighthouse meets the sky—specifically where the star trails track around the apex of the lighthouse. Thus, he composes the shot so the rooftops and chimneys of the buildings point toward the spot where these lines converge at the top of the lighthouse.
But what if a scene lacks the obvious benefits of the foreground in this particular shot? That’s where Johnston’s other images come into play. As he says, “even if you don’t have a solid foreground with a leading line or something else on the ground, you can still use elements within the landscape to point directly to what you want.”
When shooting landscapes with a wide-angle lens, Johnston says he typically looks for three areas of interest in his compositions—namely a foreground, midground, and a background. His second shot is far different from the first, but it still fulfills these criteria and you’ll see how uses the foreground in a creative way.
Johnston’s other images pose yet different challenges and solutions that rely upon sound strategies for incorporating foreground elements in various ways to maximize the impact of just about every landscape image he makes.
After watching the video be sure to visit Johnston’s instructional YouTube channel where there much more to learn.
We also recommend watching the tutorial we posted earlier from another accomplished pro who demonstrates how to add fog and mist to landscape photos for a unique, “atmospheric” effect.
Landscape photographers constantly grapple with complicated, messy scenes that have a wide range of tones, whether their shooting at sunrise, sunset, or in the middle of the day. As a result it’s not uncommon to return home with a few images that would be spectacular were it not for the fact that they’re seriously underexposed.
The goal of this video tutorial is help avoid dampening your spirits when this occurs, and to provide a straightforward method for rescuing these underexposed images in Lightroom. Or as instructor Neil Borg puts it, “transform dark photos into stunning masterpieces.”
Borg is an accomplished pro specializing in travel and landscape photography, so he’s experienced this challenge on numerous occasions. He notes that bright highlights and dark shadows are often the culprits and they’re easy to fix by using the few simple steps that he provides.
The demonstration seascape was shot at the coast on the small island of Malta, with the sea in the background, some nice clouds in the sky, and imposing rock formations and a waterfall in the foreground. Sounds like a perfect scene, right? Unfortunately the original shot is so dull and dark that most of us would consider it a throwaway.
Borg isn’t someone who gives up that easily and the transformation he achieves is nothing short of breathtaking. In barely 10 minutes you’ll learn his techniques for boosting exposure, recovering details, and enhancing colors in way that the beautiful result retains a very realistic look.
He begins with few basic exposure adjustments that open up the image, but it still appears dull and drab with hardly any color to faithfully represent the scene. Other techniques are clearly needed and Borg begins by cutting Dehaze and Clarity to introduce a subtle “dreamy effect.”
He then bumps up Texture to accentuate details in the sky, foreground, and waterfall in the rocks. Borg also desaturates green tones under the waterfall because he finds them objectionable. A Linear Gradient over the top portion of the shot enables him to selectively adjust exposure in the sky.
The waterfall should be an attention-grabbing element of the scene, but it’s severely deemphasized in the original image. So Borg makes a selection with the Brush tool and significantly brightens up the flowing water. A couple more masks and some thoughtful color grading are also required to complete the impressive job and Borg quickly demonstrates how that’s done.
There’ much more to learn by visiting Borg’s YouTube channel and by watching the tutorial we posted recently from another accomplished pro, explaining how to use Linear Profiles in Lightroom for complete control when editing landscapes and other outdoor photographs.
You’ve probably heard the term “Expose to the Right” (ETTR) but do you understand the benefits of this somewhat controversial technique and know how to put it to use? Today’s tutorial from the Hoffman Photography YouTube channel will get you up to speed so you can begin using ETTR today.
Instructor Rainer Hoffman is a professional photographer, educator, and prolific author who kicks off this episode by noting that ETTR relies upon on the proper use of a camera’s histogram. If you need a refresher on that topic, take a look at the earlier tutorial we posted, describing how the histogram can save your images.
Hoffman explains his goal for today’s episode like this: “My purpose is not to advocate exposing to the right, but rather to explain what’s it’s all about and why some photographers recommend using the method.” Hoffman’s explanation gets a bit technical but hang with it because no questions are left unanswered.
A simple way to begin is by imagining you and your camera are inside a completely dark room and the camera is set to a fixed shutter speed, fixed aperture, and fixed ISO value (it doesn’t matter what they are). In this situation you can’t see anything and the camera produces a black image because there’s no light reaching the sensor.
Now turn on a low wattage lamp and see what happens. Hoffman says that, “we can now see the whole scene in front of us, but the camera will only capture a very dim image.” This thought experiment continues by switching on two more lamps, one at a time, and here’s the quick takeaway:
Every time you double the amount of light, our human perception changes in a manner that’s not quite accurate. But a camera’s sensor outputs exactly twice the brightness. Or as Hoffman explains, at some point as you turn on more and more lamps, “the photo will become overexposed, while our brain still perceives a perfectly exposed image.”
In other words, as the light continues to increase “the sensor reacts in a linear fashion while our eyes respond logarithmically.” With this necessary information under your belt, Hoffman move on to practical application that pertain to shooting with ETTR.
The goal is to capture the maximum tonal range within a scene—in a single photograph—from whites, blacks, and everything in between. We can do this by shooting multiple image and merging them during the editing process, but wouldn’t you prefer getting as close as possible with one shot in the camera?
So take a look, be patient with the technical stuff, and see if ETTR meets your needs. Then head over to Hoffman’s very interesting YouTube channel where there’s much more to learn.
And if you’re uncertain about using your camera’s histogram, be sure to watch the quick primer mentioned above.
