Hi, everybody. Welcome to Episode 15 of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, foreground, middle ground background. I’m your host, Rick, and each week I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details. My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help us with our photography, and no more.

Okay, that’s the introduction out of the way. So let’s get straight into this.

What are foreground, middle ground and background then?

Well, unusually in photography, that’s what they are. The foreground is the bit in the front, the middle ground is a bit in the middle. And the background is a bit at the back.

Right, that’s that episode over. Bye for now.

Just kidding. And this is important. It might sound dull. And I’ll be honest with you, no, it’s not the most exciting subject, but it is important. For a very, very good reason.

I spent the last couple of episodes talking about composition, which for me, is the most important thing in photography. You have to get the technical stuff, right. But when you’re a professional photographer, that’s a given.

It’s all about the composition, and nobody else sees things the way that you do.

This is what I call the answer paragraph. Now the reason I’ve done this is quite simple. I have a blog post for each episode of my podcast. And this is the bit that hopefully, Google will pick up and maybe get to number one in Google, which is always nice.

So this is the written bit.

The foreground element should be the first thing that the viewer sees, with the middle ground being next. These two elements, when combined correctly, take the viewer’s eye naturally to the background which provides a sense of depth and further interest to the viewer. When you carefully combine the foreground, middle ground, and background in a composition you will be creating a better photo. Get these elements right and you create an interesting photo, giving a 2D image a sense of depth.

All my own words, all my own thoughts.

You can listen to the episode here

Or keep on reading. Or do both. Entirely up to you!

On the downside, get these elements wrong, and you will have a less pleasing, confused and cluttered image that does not make sense. Publish one of these photos online and you’ll be instantly discarded and possibly forever forgotten.

Don’t forget it’s a harsh world out there, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Okay, so the three elements are foreground, middle ground background. Yeah, not a lot to say about them. Instead, what I want to do is tell you my 10 steps to getting your foreground, middle ground and background right.

Learning in the field

I learned this very important lesson in getting your composition right and getting the three elements in order on a five-day photographic extravaganza to the wonderful Greek island of Santorini.

When I went to Santorini I knew what the island looked like. I’d seen some photos that people have taken but I didn’t study them or research the island. I just went there.

The first step.

The first step in my highly technical guide to getting foreground, middle ground and background correct is this.

1 – Walk around.

Yep, walk around, don’t turn up, get your camera out and start taking photos. Well, when I say don’t do that, not unless there’s some stunning light happening or a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. So I walk around, with my camera in my hand.

Digression – I don’t use a neck strap. I don’t know why but I haven’t done for years. I have a wrist strap, both for my Canon 6D and my Olympus EM5 Mk2. I prefer a wrist strap so the camera is safely in hand – it’s certainly not on my tripod yet.

So if I see something that I have to take there and then I’m ready to do it. I’m not walking around with a camera around my neck or stuck on a tripad. Is that a combination of a tripod and an iPad? I could have invented a new product that might be worth looking into!

The tripad!

No, I have a good walk around and have a good look.

2 Study different views.

Don’t take photos yet. I will make that point again. Don’t take photos yet. What I used to do was get to somewhere remotely interesting, photograph everything, move on to the next place, photograph everything, move on to the next place.

You get the idea.

Then get home, and import hundreds and hundreds of photos into Lightroom. And what did I have? Hundreds of rubbish photos. Yep, I did this for years, hundreds of rubbish photos.

So walk around, study different views, and look at things. Number one job. Okay, what’s next?

3 Check the light.

See if there’s any directional light, well, there’s always directional light. But see what’s happening with the light, how it is interacting on a scene, if there’s an interesting angle. When you walk around you’ll see the light interacting in different ways within the scene, you get different shadows, different highlights, different textures and patterns, you need to be aware of the light and what’s going on.

4 Choose a focal length for the scene that you’ve chosen.

I’ve missed out on a vital step here, which was, yep, choose something to photograph. But the focal length will determine what you get into a composition. So as I’m walking around, I find something interesting, I’ll put the camera to my eye, try some different focal lengths, zoom in, zoom out, stay in the middle, and see what’s working, which gives me a good idea.

I also look from high and low and left and right. That almost sounds like a dance doesn’t it, put your camera high, put your camera low, or put your eyes high, put your eyes low, move to the left, move to the right.

See what happens to the scene.

There is a bit of refining of something that might be a potentially interesting image. And another thing that I do, a very, very old cliche I know, is I zoom with my feet. Yeah, move forwards, walk towards something or to a scene, walk towards it. When you get closer things change and the relationships between foreground mid-ground and background change, Move back, and again, you get a similar change to all these things. Move around, change position, change how the bits that you can see relate to each other. And at some point, you’ll end up with a decent composition with a logical foreground, middle ground and background.

Once you have got to that point, take your photos, but not before. And this is the big change. The walking around moving left, right, here, there, up, down, blah, blah, blah, has resulted in me taking a lot fewer photos.

And I’m getting a lot more higher-quality photos. So I’m taking fewer photos and taking better photos. I’ve got less sorting to do in Lightroom, less editing, less memory being used, and less useless rubbish cluttering my hard drive.

What is not to love, as I say far too often?

So like I say, my cameras ready just in case. But I walk around, take the time, enjoy myself, no pressure. Okay, that might sound rather simplistic, but it is actually what I do. And it’s free advice. This doesn’t cost you anything to get better photos. You’re just moving around thinking about things.

So I hope that this, which is probably the last in my series of episodes on composition, I hope these three episodes have helped.

What’s next? In the next Photography Explained Podcast episode 16 – Take More Interesting Photos.

Thank you

I’d like to say thank you. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. If you did, please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcasts from. Please subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and please tell everybody else about my podcast and I’ll be very grateful.

You can check out my website, Rick McEvoy Photography for lots more about me and my architectural photography work. Finally, if you want me to explain something, get in touch, head over to my website, where there are loads of ways you can get in touch. (Post Podcast recording note – I now have the Photography Explained Podcast website.

And with that, I will say thank you very much.

This episode was brought to you by the power of caffeine in tea.

I’ve been Rick McEvoy. Thanks again for listening and giving me 10 minutes of your valuable time. I will see you in the next episode.

Cheers from me Rick

OK – that was the podcast episode.

Want to know more?

Head over to the Start page on the Photography Explained Podcast website to find out more.

And here is the list of episodes published to date – you can listen to any episode straight from this page which is nice.

Let me know if there is a photography thing that you want me to explain and I will add it to my list. Just head over to the This is my list of things to explain page of this website to see what is on there already.

Let me send you stuff

I send out a weekly email to my subscribers. It is my take on one photography thing, plus what I have been writing and talking about. Just fill in the box and you can get my weekly photographic musings straight to your inbox. Which is nice.

And finally a little bit about me

Finally, yes this paragraph is all about me – check out my Rick McEvoy Photography website to find out more about me and my architectural, construction, real estate and travel photography work. I also write about general photography stuff, all in plain English without the irrelevant detail.

Thank you

Thanks for listening to my podcast (if you did) and reading this blog post (which I assume you have done as you are reading this).

Cheers from me Rick