Hi Leanne,
Nowadays nearly every photo we take is in sharp focus, from the foreground right through to the background.
Part of the reason for this is that most of us have small-format cameras that inherently have good depth-of-field. Fifty years ago, a landscape photographer making a photograph like this would typically use a large format camera which would be capable of producing very short depths of field – part of the photograph would appear in focus while other parts of the photograph would be soft. The photographer could achieve this by using a wide aperture or tilting the lens, a trick that was rather unique to large landscape cameras of the time.
Most small cameras don't give you the option of tilting the lens, but it is possible to fake the effect using computer software.
In the photo below I have used the Tilt-Shift blur effect on Photoshop to soften the top and foreground of this image.
When we do this, what you will notice is that we spend less time looking at the grass, and more time noticing the bridge. It's a simple trick but it can make all the difference to a photograph.
Cheers for now, Anthony.
Image Doctor's edited version
