I have read that the ideal ‘landscape’ has three key elements; the foreground, the middle ground and background.

With that in mind I decided to look for something washed ashore. These two washed up lumps of sea weed may not be the most exotic foregrounds imaginable but at short notice and without a lot of options I decided to make them my feature. I think it works though this kind of depth of field can be quite challenging and even at f/22 it is a compromise.

One thing I recently came to realise is how important hyper-focal calculations are in getting this kind of depth. Simply focusing on getting the foreground tack sharp at wide open aperture and then stopping does not work and would have resulted in an out of focus background.

An alternative to using hyper-focal calculations to get the focus right is to use the live preview, stop down to your target aperture and pick two points, one in the extreme foreground and the other in the background. Using live preview zoomed in to the maximum magnification, manually find the best focus for each of the two chosen points in the frame set the focus about halfway between. It’s always best to use the largest aperture you can get away for the depth you need as very small apertures will make the entire image soft due to diffraction.

So does the combination make for an ideal landscape? Your thoughts are welcome.

Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Day 514, Washed Up’ 20s f/22 ISO200 15mm