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Simple Tips For Better Pics 12: A Well Grounded Perspective

By: Peter

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"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me."

Psalm 131:1

 

Photography and the various compositions that photographers choose is all about perspective. Various angles of various things can have various results. As generic and lackluster as that may sound, what I mean by that is, a photo should always "tell a story." I can assure you any of the greatest and most well known pictures always tell a powerful story. For example, Ansel Adam's portfolio is synonymous with monochrome or "black and white" photography. But what made his images so impactful was his capturing, or story, of the American West. Yes he's known for his black and whites, but there's a story there.

For all of us less known photographers, it's important that we take advantage of any opportunities to tell our "story" in a picture. It's what separates a "blah" image from a "yeah!" image. And sometimes, the best way to convey that story is deciding on your perspective. Let me illustrate. Below is a picture I took of a trailhead I was on, and although it's a nice picture, it seems like something is not quite there:

 

I wanted to convey an almost curious and unknown conclusion to this image, as the trail goes off into the distance into the "seemingly" unknown. (Of course those up the trail know exactly what's there, but you get the idea) So in this case, the story I want to tell is needing a change... of perspective. Let's try something different. Let's get low... really low. To the ground. As a matter of fact, I'm not even going to use a tripod. I'm simply going to hold the camera as close to the ground as I can and get the angle, or perspective, to tell my story:

That's more like it! Not only does the picture still get your attention with the "seemingly" unknown in the distance up the trail, but now it's much more dynamic, as it has the added benefit of focal distance blur to give it more of a dimensionality. If you read my last article about adjusting your perspective here: Simple Tips For Better Pics 11: Things are Lookin' Up! then this will work in similar fashion. We often tend to think as photographers on a "close or far, left or right" (x or y axis) approach, but not so much on the vertical (z axis), up or down. In this case, really down! To further illustrate, here's another example below, of one I took at my height standing, followed under it by one I took at ground level:

So I think this definitely makes for a nicely improved photograph; not that the original was bad but rather it just needed an extra visual "shove" so to speak.

It's probably easy to guess why I used the Passage from Psalm 131:1 at the start of this article considering the context and content of the discussion. I think further on it though and realize a very important lesson inherent to that verse. I'm just going to speak for myself for a moment, but... when I think about situations I need to resolve or questions I have about certain things - I don't know if you can relate to this but - it seems like it doesn't take long before I get myself all wrapped up in something that I'm not going to be able to process; in other words, like David wrote in the Psalm above, "exercising myself in great matters, or in things too high for me." Getting all up there when I really need to be at ground level, take a moment and ask God for Help and Guidance, and get His perspective. Hard to do that when I need to be grounded, and not all up "there" somewhere... Lessons to learn...

Hope this topic was a helpful blessing! Please leave a comment below and feel free to ask any questions you may have, and of course take care - and grab those pictures!

 

Until next time...

 

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