creating additional boundaries to elements

You can learn more about text wrap at https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/text-wrap.html.

You can add a text wrap to the images. Select the image(s) frame and from the Text Wrap panel (Window>Text Wrap) choose the type of text wrap, in this case Wrap around bounding box, and the amount of offset. I suggest making the offset amount equivalent to your leading value, but you can adjust this to your taste.

Select the image, open the text wrap panel and set it appropriately.