Perspective is the final Building Block required for Visual Design for photography. This continues from my original posting on the book Photographing the world around you.
Perspective enables us to represent the 3-D world within the two-dimensional visual design of a photograph. You create perspective through our representation of depth or distance on a flat surface. The third dimension is created through our arrangement of lines, shapes and textures within our visual design.
You can exaggerate the perspective of the third dimension through your choice of camera lens.
A wide-angle lens will make objects close to the camera larger than life. They may also distort the objects appearance. This will be dependent on the characteristics of your lens. Conversely, distant objects will appear much smaller and therefore much further away. This creates the illusion of vast distances and space within the visual design for the viewer, whose eyes are led into the vast space before them.
A telephoto lens will compress all the objects within the scene so that things in the distance appear much closer. This compression of space reduces the impression of distance within the visual design. For example, those mountains on the horizon will appear much closer than they are in reality.
Using a short telephoto lens the Langeoog water tower appears much larger than the street lamp in the foreground as well as closer. The scene is not compressed greatly as this is only slightly longer than the standard length lens.
A standard focal length lens will make things appear normal to the viewer. This is the way we view the world through our eyes naturally as if we were at the scene in real life. For a standard 35mm or full-frame digital SLR, the standard focal length of the lens is considered 50mm.
Perspective can also be changed greatly by the level of your camera and its angle relative to horizontal. If your camera is positioned at an angle a different angle, the effect of any converging lines will be exaggerated. The greater the deviation from level the more converging lines will be emphasised. The wider the focal length of the lens the more sensitive it will come to changing the perspective.
Landscape photographers often use perspective to create dramatic scenes by placing their camera close to the ground with a wide-angle lens fitted. Tilting the camera down towards the ground slightly will make the landscape appear even more dramatic.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The website is really used for newsletters that are published by my mother. I’m pushing 59 so you can imagine how awesome it is that she is doing this.
Anyhow, she sent me a picture that I’m pretty sure looks the way it looks because of foreshortening.
I found your page the best description of what I was talking about using Google to search. Google pointed me to some *very* odd pages.
Anyhow, I won’t try and attach the photo to this message but will give the link of the photo that I’ve uploaded to my webspace at:
http://members.shaw.ca/vjjsansum/pastedgraphic.jpg
(I know how paranoid people using PC’s are about attached files… with good reason)
Reply or not,
Yours
Victor Sansum
Thank you for you comments Victor, I’m glad you found the article helpful.
I agree that the picture you sent a link to is using an approximately standard focal length lens.
Unfortunately it is underexposed as the camera has adjusted itself to middle grey, which is how all cameras work. To overcome this you can set the exposure compensation to plus one stop or even more.
Hope that helps.