This is another more advanced style of photograph that really starts to tap into your creative potential. Perspective photography is really a wide range of concepts, most of which we will describe below. But all of them have the key characteristic that they get you to think outside the box and see the world in a new way. As you can tell already by that description, it will definitely involve tapping into your creativity like never before, but the results will definitely be worth it.
The first type of perspective photography, and one that a lot of people love in general, is the human shrinking or enlarging effect. This is basically when you have someone that appears to be much smaller or larger than they really are, by simply situating them next to recognizable objects in the context of the photo, while in reality they are at different depths in real life.
For example, if someone were to reach out in the foreground and pretend to pinch a small object with their fingers, but position themselves well in front of the Eiffel tower, the photographer can make it look as though they were actually grabbing the tip of the Eiffel tower with their fingers, making them look gigantic as a result of the perceived perspective. Or you could even have someone stand at the top of a hill way in the background and place your own hand (or someone else’s hand) in the foreground and make it appear as though they are standing on a human hand, thus making them appear to be super tiny.
.For this particular genre of perspective photography, there is one key thing that I wanted to point out that will definitely help make some of your shots easier to take. A lot of times with these types of photos, it is fairly difficult to get the perfect positioning of both the person and the other object right away. This means that a lot of time gets put into adjusting the people in the photo to ultimately get the perfect shot that creates the perfect optical illusion.
But when you are about 90% of the way there, and you just can’t get the person into the right position by moving them back and forth slightly, the key here is to move your lens to get the perfect positioning. It is much easier to get the perfect angle by moving your steady hands to set the camera at just the right angle. And while you can’t do this for the first 90% of the process, it is most efficient way to get to 100% perfection once everything else is more or less in place. Keep this in mind and you’ll save yourself a lot of time the next time you try this sort of shot.
Another relatively simple photo but one that I absolutely love is the close-up shot. And not just close up while getting the entire object in the frame of the photo, but to fully zoom in so that only part of the object is takes up the majority of the space in the shot. The key here is to try and keep the object as vague as possible, potentially combining multiple elements together, all zoomed in in the same frame. This can net some really creative shots when done properly.
And one final type of perspective shot that I wanted to discuss is the angled shot. This basically means angling your camera lens so that you aren’t taking it from an upright perspective but rather from an angled one. For example, if a person is standing upright, you should rotate your lens so that in the shot itself, the person’s body is tilted at an angle. This works not just with humans and objects that have a clear up-and-down orientation in a normal camera position, but even more fluid shots that don’t such obvious subject matter. And the more you rotate the lens, the more creative and interesting the shot becomes!
As is often the case with many styles of photography, the possibilities are nearly endless. And using the different genres above, you can accomplish all sorts of perspective photography, from the simplest techniques such as close-up and angled shots, to the more complex technique of making your subject appear super large or super small. No matter how you decide to take on this form of photography though, as long as you make sure to think outside the box and simply be creative, the photos will almost certainly come out great!