Sketching Light: An Illustrated Tour of the Possibilities of Flash

The Three Zones

Foreground, middle ground, background. In the studio, doing a portrait, you often place somebody out there in nowheresville—on a white, gray, or black seamless, devoid of information and any sense of place or activity. You got one thing you want your viewer to look at—the subject. Who is, presumably, in the foreground. And, at the camera, all your efforts go into making that happen.

But out there on the street, in the world, you don’t have the luxury (or burden) of gray seamless paper. You have stuff. Lots of it. Front to back. From people to cars to buildings to power lines. A cluttered graphic environment, to put it mildly.

So, go with it. Try to populate the picture, front to back with some level of interest or gesture. If ...