Reply To: Photography

Change Your Perspective

Take a look at this picture:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Bl-F3BWxMlNJn41GRe1k3Q?feat=directlink

It’s a nice picture of a tall tree. I was walking along a street and saw the interesting leaves and the clear sky and thought that the pic would be interesting. So, I stood under the tree and snapped the shot.

Nice story, no? Unfortunately, everything in it (aside from the clear sky) was a lie.

This is actually a small plant, about two feet tall. I was in the Marine Park salt marsh, looking for interesting things to shoot. The plant was a rather ordinary looking plant. But what’s the point in taking a picture of an ordinary looking plant? We’ve all seen non-descript plants before.

I decided, however, to make the shot different. I laid down on the floor of the marsh (yes, it was dry) underneath the plant and shot upward. By changing the perspective of the shot, the picture becomes much more interesting.

This can apply to anything. One area where you can put it to good use is with flowers. I love shooting flowers. Most people shoot flowers head-on. It’s okay, and you may get some nice shots that way, but let’s face it — we always see flowers head-on. Your shot has to be really fantastic to look good as a straight flower picture.

I was faced with this problem one time in Midtown Manhattan. Some of the local merchants on 5th Avenue put some tulips in planters on the sidewalk. The tulips looked very nice and I really wanted to get a nice shot of them. But I didn’t want to shoot them from the top downward — again, we all see tulips like that all the time.

I decided to shoot them from a different angle. The result is here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/GJOinjD_sH_P8KYVIRp_cQ?feat=directlink

By shooting from a different angle and presenting a view of the tulips that we don’t usually see, I got (IMHO) a far more interesting picture.

So, go ahead and you do it. This isn’t something you need a fancy SLR for — you can do this with any camera. So go ahead… shoot something from a different perspective. Experiment and post links here. I’d love to see what you come up with.

The Wolf