Finding a Strong Photography Foreground

Landscape photos often need a strong foreground to draw your view in. A foreground is the element in the picture that is closest to you when you take a picture and is at the bottom of the photo. Something in the foreground should capture a viewer’s attention and, especially for Lake Superior photography, lead the viewer’s eyes into the scene, across the middle part of the photo to the background.

When you photograph a  landscape before you set up your tripod and camera look around to find something interesting to put in the foreground. Try to make it one subject that you can define with a word, phrase or short sentence and make it fill up the bottom third of the frame. Ask yourself if your viewers would find it interesting. If not, find a different foreground.

In the example here, the foreground is the rock with the two puddles and the basalt rock. The basalt rock comes to a point which leads the viewer out into the middle of the photo and across Lake Superior to the background, which in this photo is the distant shoreline and the color in the sunrise.

Once you find a strong foreground, walk around it until something interesting in the background lines up, and then shoot away. If you haven’t tried this before, you’ll be surprised by how much more interesting your pictures become.

Select Photos from Grand Marais and Cook County in June