To get landscape images with fantastic depth that lead the viewer's eye, you are likely to have to wrestle with the problem of the foreground or the background not being tack sharp. In this video, you can see behind-the-scenes how one photographer achieves front-to-back focus on his landscape images.
There are many ways to capturing engaging, interesting landscape images. One of my favorites to shoot and to look at, is an image with deep focus. What I mean by that, is something in the foreground that catches your eye but is also close to the lens. This is then offset by an interesting background in the distance. The problem with capturing these is the focal plane is unlikely to be able to hold something close to the lens, and far from the lens, in focus at the same time.
While I'm not a landscape photographer (though I have dealt with this situation in that arena too), I have had to overcome that problem hundreds — if not thousands — of times over the years with macro photography. The best way to do this is typically image stacking, where you ensure each element of the image is in focus in one image, and then you blend all the images together in post-production to achieve an image that is in focus front-to-back.
In this video, landscape photographer Nigel Danson, walks you through how he achieves full focus in his images with a lot of depth, and how useful the right phone app can be in working out the distances.
