Perspective Photography
What is Perspective Anyway?
Perspective is the way our eye relates to spacial separation and the relationship between the size of objects within that spacial separation. What this means in layman’s terms is things seem smaller the further away they are, relative to their size. A classic example is the sun and the moon, both of which appear to be similar sizes in the sky yet the sun is much further away but much bigger.
Perspective is the way our eye relates to spacial separation and the relationship between the size of objects within that spacial separation. What this means in layman’s terms is things seem smaller the further away they are, relative to their size. A classic example is the sun and the moon, both of which appear to be similar sizes in the sky yet the sun is much further away but much bigger.
So how does this work in photography?
Well first of all lets get one of the myths of perspective out of the way, perspective does not change when you change your lens.
It is often said that a telephoto lens compresses perspective but actually the perspective remains the same. If you were to take the same image, one with a wide angle lens and one with a telephoto lens, then you were to crop the wide angle image to the same framing as the telephoto, the image would look identical.
Perspective, in fact can only be changed by changing position, for example, if you were to use the wide angle lens and physically move closer to your subject to get the same framing as the telephoto lens, then, you will have changed the perspective. What actually happens when you change lens is that your angle of view changes.
So, How Can We Use Perspective to Improve Our Composition in Photography?
Learning to understand how to use perspective in photography is one of those things that will come to you with experience. You need to practice, using wide angle, normal and telephoto lenses moving your position relative to the subject and understanding the nuances of it. That does not just mean moving closer or further from your subject but also moving in the vertical plane, shooting from above or getting down low.
Leading lines are a classic use of perspective in photography. By positioning yourself down low and using the lines you can draw the viewers eye into the subject, combine this technique with a deep depth of field and you can give your images an almost three dimensional feel.
Forced Perspective
The last area of perspective we will look at today is forced perspective. Forced perspective is where you make objects in the distance seem larger, smaller, closer or further away than they actually are, relative to your foreground subject. The fun in this is creating trick images that, for example show people holding up a building that appears to be the same size as them.
Be careful of your depth of field. We should see your vanishing point or subject and it must be in focus.