How To Create Depth In Photography

Creating depth in photography can be challenging, but I’m going to run you through a few easy steps to make those flat pictures come to life.

What Does Depth Mean In Photography

Depth in photography is the ability to take a flat 2D picture and create the illusion of it being 3D. Since your camera only photographs flat images, we need to find creative ways to make this happen.

Why Is Depth Important In Photography

Depth creates a more realistic scene. The human eye is use to seeing depth in every day life. By creating depth, you can really enthrall the viewer, and the eye will want to wander into the picture to see what lies further.

Composition For Creating Depth

Composing the image is the most important factor in achieving the best results. Let’s start with the subject and determine the main focal point of the photo you want to take. That can be a person, animal, even a rock.

The next thing I look for are foreground objects. What can I put closer to the lens that will give me the feeling that my subject is further into the distance? Again, this can be anything. I try to look for things that will relate to the subject, and keep the theme or idea of the image.

Last but not least backgrounds. You can create depth on all backgrounds, but finding a background that seems to never end will give you the most depth in photography. This could be a long road and open field or even a door entrance. The further the subject is from the background the more depth you create.

Here is an example of Foreground (the person in the far right) the Subject (the guy on the pink bicycle), and Background (the skatepark and trees behind him).

Camera Settings For Creating Depth

I really feel like camera settings are the least important when it comes to creating depth, but I’ll touch on it anyway. The only setting that is going to effect this is your F-Stop.

You can create a very shallow depth if you shoot at a stop of around f/1.8. A lower F-Stop will help you create out of focus objects in both the foreground and the background while keeping your subject in focus. A lower F-Stop is great for portraits when you really want the main focus of the image to be the subject.

Shooting at an F-Stop of f/8 - f/22 will give you a very deep depth of field. It allows you to keep most or all of the scene in focus and mostly relying on the composition of the image to portray the depth you are looking for. I mostly use this for landscape shots because I want to show everything in focus.

Learning to mix camera settings and composition will take some time to master, but keep practicing and experimenting and you will be creating great depth in your photography before you know it.