|The most usual means of separation in depth is to place one thing|
behind another with obvious spacial separation
and receding perspective. Near things are larger.
Unlike our eyes which are mounted side by side ( binocular vision) and give us good depth perception, the camera is monocular, has no natural depth perception, so we must adjust our subject matter to make up for this deficiency. We may do this automatically as we arrange the parts of our 'reality', but using depth of field, useful as it is, is not the only way to go.
There has been a lot of discussion around this subject. The beautiful bokeh in the blurred background etc. are an important part of the vocabulary of photographers who use a large aperture and close subject to achieve a dramatic separation of frontal subject and softened background. One might think sometimes that that was the only way to achieve such a separation. But in practice we use several.
|The tree trunk is obviously in front of the cedar branches|
and is lighter in tone and different in texture and shape.
|In colour and texture there|
is little separation except for the grey trunk...
|...especially in monochrome. With our eyes|
we can see the real depth
that is present but not in the
The tree trunk adds needed form
to this busy image.
|Sharp, red and white rails set|
off the soft receding background.
Allowing the background
to soften in the distance supplies
a natural sense of depth.
|In monochrome the close values tend|
to loose the separation.
|Colour difference gives separation.|
|As it does in monochrome as |
Establishing the appropriate
sharpness in a snowstorm
is the tricky part here.
|Even with all the green we can separate the shape|
of the lighter tree from background