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Perspective
By sirsnapalot | February 22, 2009
One of the reasons I started my 365 project was to learn perspective. I had a tendency to take the same photos over and over, from the same perspective- the height of my head, where I hold the camera up to my face to see the photo I’m about to take. Of course, I knew you were supposed to try different perspectives, but only rarely did I do this.
The Picture365 project, which requires me to take a different photo every day, forces me to be more creative. And that has paid dividends.
Yesterday, for instance, we had a windy and chilly day, but it was sunny and nice otherwise. I decided to try out a new mini-GPS logger for photograph that allows you to geotag your pictures cheaply (more on that in another post), so I set out to downtown Dallas, and decided to focus on an historic old cemetery near downtown. I spent well over an hour there taking photos, and was rather pleased that I was more inventive than usual.
Greenwood Cemetery
You can see in this photo from the headstones, that they are indeed quite old. The perspective here was to show that this cemetery was embedded in the city, so I got onto my stomach on the ground to position one of the surrounding buildings between two old headstones.
Greenwood Cemetery
Similarly, from another spot in the cemetery, I again shot from my stomach to show Cityplace a short distance away. With all the trees in the cemetery, these type of shots will only work in the winter, when the trees are barren. Even so, I had to scout for places where you could see the buildings from grass level, the perspective I wanted to shoot.
Greenwood Cemetery Crape Myrtle
When out on a photo trek, always keep your eye out for anything unusual. The cemetery was full of crape myrtles, which besides being covered in beautiful flowers in the summertime, have striking trunks and branches. The sun was getting low in the sky, and the lighting was dramatic here. In this shot, I am on my back with my hair in the grass, shooting straight upwards.
In this particular shot, I wanted more of the branches, so I took two shots and combined them to make a bigger, wider angle shot, using the Photomerge capability in Photoshop (you can use any stitching software).
While taking these shots, I happened to get lucky, as it turns out that grey foxes live in the cemetery grounds as well.
Greenwood Cemetery Grey Fox
Not that this has anything to do with perspective, but I’m quite happy to have had this unusual opportunity, living in the city as I do (even though I’m in the suburbs and live on a creek, the wildlife menagerie in our backyard does not included foxes).
Once finished, I stopped downtown to grab a few photos of the still-being-built Winspear Opera House, then headed home up the Tollway. I passed by the Mary Kay building in Addison- long one of my favorites. The lighting was so rich in the setting sun, I decided to take some photos of it as well.
Mary Kay Building
For reference, here’s a wide angle shot of the entire building, so you can appreciate its unusual design. But I didn’t just want this “standard” photo of it. I wanted to get some different perspectives.
Mary Kay Building
Again, I happened to get lucky as this plane flew over the building on approach to Addison Airport.
Mary Kay Building
Here I am almost right up against the building. I wanted to capture the sawtooth edge against the blue sky.
Mary Kay Building
The intention here was to simply get a pattern or texture shot, so I isolated just the windows and granite between them, but at an angle for an element of disorientation.
And finally, nearby was a round, mirrored building that very odly reflected the Mary Kay building in its convex facets. I love this shot, not just for the truncated columns of reflection, but also each glass pane distorts its piece of the reflection in a different way.
So when you go out on a photo trek, lay down, look up, and try for extreme perspectives to get some variations and interest in your photo collection. Of course, as with any tool or technique, don’t overuse it- there is plenty of room for the “standard shot”, but you can spice up any collection of photos by having some fun and trying out a different perspetive.
As briefly mentioned, the primary purpose of this trek was to learn how to use my new geotagging device. I will have a separate article on that in the near future.
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