Exercise 2.3 required us to take three images from the ‘People and activity’ project and in each photo identify the foreground, mid-ground and background by drawing lines around them.
The definitions provided for each were:
- Foreground is usually within a few metres of the photographer.
- Mid-ground is in between distinct foreground and background. Soe photos don’t have a middle-ground, like Blossfeldt’s studies.
- Backgrounds can be anything from distant buildings to th esky or just a white backdrop.
The following three photos were taken at the British National Ploughing Championships and I believe have defined foreground, mid-ground and background as annotated on each.
In the above image the woman and dog are the subject and are therefore prime candidates for being the mid-ground of the image. The background contains the lorry, people sitting on the ground and the distance landscape. The foreground is the nearby grass.
In the photo above the family and signs are the subject and become the midground of the image. The people in the distance, the ploughed field, tractors and the distant trees, hills and sky fill the background. The foreground becomes everything closer to the camera that the dogs’ shadows.
In the above photo the mid-ground and background were easy to determine. The tractor, plough, driver and judge are the subject and provide an indication of where the mid-ground is. The background is the distant people and parts of the ploughed field. The foreground, however, became a bit more arbitrary as there is quite a distance from the camera to the subject of the photo.
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