1. A method for identifying a foreground object in a digital image of a surveillance region, the surveillance region including one or more lighting artifacts, the method comprising: identifying a proto-object in a digital image using a background subtraction method, the proto-object being associated with a lighting artifact in the surveillance region, the background subtraction method preserving boundary details and interior texture details of proto-objects associated with lighting artifacts; determining a plurality of characteristics of the proto-object digital data, the characteristics, individually or in combination, distinguishing a proto-object related to a lighting artifact from its background; and determining by a learning machine a likelihood that the plurality of characteristics is associated with a foreground object, the learning machine having been trained with the plurality of characteristics of proto-objects classified as either foreground or not foreground.