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So far in my landscape photography series, I’ve talked about compositional elements, their weights and how to use their properties to balance the composition by imagining a balance of torques around the middle axis of an image. I also discussed balancing of negative space, the perception of subject direction and the need to separate elements. It’s time to finally (albeit perhaps temporarily) leave the long discussion of balance and element placement, and move on to talk about another important aspect of landscape photographs: depth.
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A top view of Fagradalsfjall Volcano, Iceland. Does this image have depth in your perspective? If it does, in what sense? If it doesn’t, what would make it have depth? DJI Mavic 2 Pro pano stitch, April 2021 | 1/30 sec | F7.1 |
Depth perception is critically important in all realms of photography, since we have a two-dimensional medium trying to portray a three-dimensional reality. One of the worst words one can say about an image is that it is “flat” in some way, be it in color, contrast or perceived depth. We want to draw the viewer’s eye into the photo and make them believe what they are seeing is part of the world, not just a flat projection.
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Same question as above. Canon 5D IV, Canon 11-24mm F4 | ISO 100 | 0.5 sec | F11 |
In portrait photography, the photographer often creates depth by using a wide aperture and blurring the background. This imitates the eye’s limited depth of field and leads the brain to perceive the background as further away than the subject. In studio photography, a similar result is achieved by using the studio lights in directions that emphasize depth, for example side-lighting. But in landscape photography, there are no controllable studio lights, and the wide-angle lenses often used won’t blur the background even if we wanted to (and we usually don’t). How can we then create a sense of depth in a landscape image? What does it contribute to landscape photography, and how does this contribution compare to other fields of photography? Is depth always needed?
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What is it about this image that enhances the sense of depth? DJI Mavic II Pro | ISO 100 | 1/25 sec | F6.3 |
I’ll answer the last question first: no, depth is not always needed. An image can be interesting and draw the viewer’s eye in many ways. Take for example the image below, where there is practically no depth at all. Even so, I like this image. It has movement, textures, lines and interesting colors – all those serve to make it appealing. It’s also well-balanced compositionally. (Can you use the ideas introduced in the previous articles to explain in what sense it’s well-balanced?)
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DJI Mavic II Pro | ISO 100 | 1/240 sec | F9 |
Back to the original question: how does one create the perception of depth in a landscape image? For me, the answer consists of just one notion: relations between compositional layers. Simple enough, but controlling that interplay is one of the most powerful methods to create interesting images that make viewers feel like they are part of the depicted world. Let me explain exactly what I mean.
The most common way to create depth in an image is by including a nearby element and a faraway element. At the risk of being ridiculously obvious, I’d claim that when there is a nearby element and a faraway element, the brain perceives the distance between them as the depth of the image. But that’s a mystery in itself. How does the viewer know that the faraway element is far and the nearby element is near?
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There’s not much other than intuition to suggest that the mountains at the top part of this image are farther away than the ice pile at the bottom. As far as we know, the little mountains could be hovering right above the ice in the foreground. Canon 5D IV, Canon 16-35mm F2.8L III, focus stacked | ISO 100 | 0.4 sec | F11 |
While knowledge of mountains’ usual size lets us intuit that they’re far away, this is not enough for a powerful image, I’d claim. As photographers, it’s better not to assume. We should employ actual methods of separating the different distance layers to establish a proper sense of depth in an image for the viewers’ sake. In this article I’ll present three methods we can use.
The first method, and one that connects us to a previous article, is to create physical separation between layers of different distances. The simple logic is that if some compositional elements are separated from other, clearly distinct elements, there must be some distance between them. Intuitive but not always implementable.
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The different dunes are separated from each other and from the background mountain by shadows and by color due to the different amounts of snow on them. This strengthens the perception that the elements are distant from each other, and in turn the sensation of depth in the image. DJI Mavic II Pro | ISO 100 | 1/60 sec | F8 |
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The multitude of distinct, separate layers enhances the sensation of depth. Canon 5D III, Canon 70-300 F4-5.6L IS | ISO 100 | 1/320 sec | F8 |
The second method of separating different distance layers is to have some sort of qualitative difference between elements of different distances. This complements and strengthens the viewer’s intuitions, and improves their understanding of what’s going on in the image. Light might be the best differentiator: if elements are lit differently, the brain tells us there is good reason to believe they are in different places, which probably means they are at different distances from the viewer. Again, I know this sounds a bit (or very) obvious, but I still want to stress the important connection between distinctness of elements and the sensation of distance.
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The background mountains (the Torres Del Paine) are lit in a dramatically different way from the foreground elements. This enhances the perception of them being much farther away than the foreground, as was the case in reality. Canon 5D IV, Canon 16-35 F4L IS, focus stacked | ISO 100 | 1/2 sec | F14 |
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The gradient in light from the bottom right to the top left enhances the sensation of differentiation and depth. DJI Mavic II Pro | ISO 100 | 1/60 sec | F10 |
There can be other ways to differentiate elements to suggest different distances. For example, fog has a stronger effect the farther away an element is, so if an element is more strongly shrouded, it is probably farther away. This works together with the color differentiation created by the inherent fading of elements in thicker fog.
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The farther elements are clearly more fogged, which creates a nice separation and enhances the perception of depth in the image. Canon 5D III, Tamron 24-70mm F2.8 | ISO 200 1/320 sec | F8 |
The third method of differentiating distance layers is to include interplay between them. This can take the form of parallelism, but the best interplay comes in the form of leading lines. Leading lines are lines that lead the viewer’s eye to and from different locations in the image. These locations could contain compositional masses or they could not. Most commonly, leading lines lead from the foreground to the background, but this doesn’t have to be the case – if there are lines leading the viewer’s eye from one place to the other, there must be a distance between them, and in our brain, that distance translates to depth.
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There are clear leading lines between the foreground and the background. Sony A7R, Samynag 14mm F2.8, focus stacked | ISO200 | 15 sec | F14 |
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Here the foreground element also consists of leading lines. These lines lead the viewer’s eye from the obviously nearby foreground to the apparently distant background. Also the fact that you can differentiate grains of sand in the foreground enhances the understanding that the foreground element is closer to you. Canon 5D IV, Canon 11-24mm F4, focus stack | ISO100 | 0.8 sec | F13 |
It’s very important to bear in mind that convergence of leading lines strongly enhances depth. As we all know, parallel lines seem to approach each other as they recede from us, so including a similar effect in a landscape image can help the viewer not only perceive depth, but get a feel of its magnitude.
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The red leading lines are more or less equidistant in reality. The rate by which they converge helps the viewer judge the amount of depth in the shot. DJI Mavic II Pro | ISO 100 | 1/40 sec | F8 |
So far, the ideas I’ve presented in this article are surely the least contestable out of the entire series. But here is a point that you may not have thought of yet: the perception of depth can be triggered by the above methods, even when there isn’t an actual depth represented in the image. Let’s go back to the first image presented in this article.
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It may appear that this image should suffer from lack of depth. After all, it’s a top-down shot and everything is approximately the same distance from the viewer. But I would claim that even so, there is apparent depth in this image.
The three methods I’ve surveyed are all very much present here: differentiation between compositional layers – qualitative differences – interplay between the layers. The three concentric layers (one could say four, see diagram below) – the eruption in the middle, the black earth and the snow on the periphery – are very nicely separated due to different colors and brightness, while the multiple lava rivers connect the layers and create interplay between them (interestingly, the leading lines are radial, as opposed to the foreground-background type, but that makes sense since there is no foreground). All this causes a flat, top-down shot to have a sensation of depth despite the lack of it.
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| The different concentric layers in the image and the interplay between them. |
This is an extreme example, but the same holds true for other images. When the photographer wants to enhance the sense of depth in an image, the methods mentioned above can help with that regardless of the actual depth. Let’s look at a few more examples:
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Canon 5D IV, Canon 70-300mm F4-5.6 IS, 200mm | ISO 1600 | 0.3 sec | F5.6 |
In the image above, the differences between masses and lines aren’t significant, so we can’t rely on foreshortening to show depth. However, there are distinct layers with different textures, and the farther ones are blurred due to heat haze and shallow depth of field. This creates a sense of depth even when there is very little qualitative difference between the image’s components.
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DJI Mavic 2 Pro | ISO100 | 1/20 sec | F7.1 |
In the image above, the fact that the viewer is “surrounded” by the ice and looking outside of the iceberg into the bay contributes to the sense of depth in the image. There is also a large difference in the brightness levels and colors of the different layers.
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Canon 5D IV, Canon 70-300 F4-5.6, 128mm | ISO 400 | 1/500 sec | F7.1 |
In this last example we don’t have really distinct masses, and the lines are all over the place, but the separation of layers by the late afternoon directional light serves to differentiate them and give a very pronounced sense of depth to the image.
As before in the series, here is some homework. In each of the images below, try to understand the amount of perceived depth and what helped create it. Does the perceived depth match the actual amount of depth? Why?
Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveller based in Israel. You can follow Erez’s work on Instagram and Facebook, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates and to his YouTube channel.
If you’d like to experience and shoot some of the world’s most fascinating landscapes with Erez as your guide, take a look at his unique photography workshops in The Lofoten Islands, Indonesia, Greenland, Madagascar, Namibia and the Argentinean Puna.
Erez also offers video tutorials discussing his images and explaining how he achieved them.
More in The Landscape Composition Series:
Selected Articles by Erez Marom:
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