Welcome to week 3 of our little smart phone series. I am taking you through the 4 aspects of taking better photos of your loved ones using only your smartphone and this week we are talking about perspective.

If you haven’t had a chance to read the blog posts about light and composition, I recommend you start there! Light is really the foundation of photography, and composing is part of the basics. Once you understand those two then you can really step into this week’s subject: perspective.

Perspective is an interesting thing when it comes to photography. For starters, every photo is taken from a perspective, but it’s not really something you take note of when you first look at an image. Perspective is quite simply, the vantage point of the camera, itself, but more artistically speaking, it’s how the photographer sees things. Oftentimes the photos that feel the most intriguing, the most interesting, the most captivating, are not necessarily photos of beautiful, interesting, or wonderful things, but ordinary things from a unique perspective. So, this week I am going to help you get a new perspective on your loved ones to make for some interesting, frame-worthy, and captivating images. 

*Note: I have been thinking a lot about my nieces and nephews online presence and have decided that for their sake I will not be sharing their faces in every image. I may go more into depth as to why in another post, but for now I think you can get the same insight without seeing their faces in every image. Thanks for understanding!

Now, let’s talk about my 3 best tips for getting a new perspective:

1. Get Eye Level

I want you to think about all the things you normally see at eye level. Usually picture frames, other full grown adults, tv screens, etc… There are things we often see at eye level and things we don’t. For this perspective challenge, I want you to start putting your lens at “eye level” with things we don’t often get eye level with. In this example, my lens is eye level with my nephew’s high chair tray. I’m not usually at eye level with a high chair tray even when I’m sitting next to one. This idea offers a unique perspective on our loved ones and is something we can try by flipping our phones upside down so that the lens is closest, or “eye level” with something I don’t normally see at eye level like the ground, on a high tree branch, etc…The next time you’re standing at normal height clicking away, I want you to pause and ask yourself, “what would this look like at eye level?” Warning: crouching or climbing may be involved. Proceed with caution.

2. Look Up

This concept goes hand in hand with our “more sky” concept that we learned back in our composition lesson. This is really a significant perspective for someone who you don’t normally look up at very often (like your kids!). Think about where you’d need to be in order to look up at your kids – you’d have to be below them which is not a place we spend a lot of time in. Thus, this new perspective can make our kids look larger than life in our photos which is how we feel about them, anyway. Take these examples of my niece where I crouched down so I could point my lens up at her. Look what else I got in the frame: tree tops, and a tall building I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. Knowing that these things in real life are very tall, seeing a child measure up next to them makes this an interesting photo even if my viewer wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly why:

3. Look Down

While this seems to be an “average” perspective especially when it comes to our kids, I want you to think more about “getting above” rather than just “looking down.” We don’t often get directly above something and peer directly down over it, thus this perspective can be a familiar one but with a  fresh twist that makes it feel novel. Take this photo of my nephew for example, I am often looking down on him, but something about seeing him from directly overhead feels unique and nostalgic all at the same time.

There are many “perspectives” we can take on a subject, but these three are often perspectives we don’t usually come across in our everyday lives. Thus, they offer something new, a seemingly “original” way to see the people we love. 

I want to hear from you! Try out these tips, play around with them, figure out what works for you and see if you can come up with a photo you just love. Heck, let me know if in playing around you found a new trick to share with the class! I love hearing from y’all and can’t wait to see what photos you come up with!

Until next time, friend!

xo,

Jess