How I Learned to Create Depth in my Photography

I learned the technique of including something in the foreground to create depth from a young photographer I met while on travel. I think it occurred during one of my visits to the Northwest. I’d spent the day taking photographs of Mount Rainier, one of which was used for the month of February in the Edgar Cayce Calendar for 2008.

We were staying in a rustic hotel which meant that our rooms did not have individual television sets. In fact, there was only one television set in the building. It sat in the entranceway of the hotel where the hotel clerk could watch it during the dull times of the day when he sat alone at his desk.

I assume the young photographer wanted to see how the photographs that he had taken that day looked so he connected his camera to the television set in the lobby. As a result, anyone going to or from their room could see the young man’s pictures. 

His photographs were gorgeous. I stopped to admire them. The young photographer volunteered that his photographs did not get really good until he learned to create depth in his images by including something in the foreground. Instinctively I had been taking many photographs that showed depth because of something in the foreground. I probably learned it in photography school as well. But, it wasn’t until my encounter with this young man that the advice sunk in.