Angles

by Joseph T. Sinclair

The pre­dom­i­nant angle for pho­tog­ra­phy is, guess what? It’s the human-point-of-view angle. It’s the angle of a per­son stand­ing up tak­ing a photo.

Peo­ple take most pho­tos from this very human point of view or angle. Con­se­quent­ly, to take an unusu­al pho­to­graph or even a dra­mat­ic one, you can sim­ply change the angle of your shot. Instead of shoot­ing from eye lev­el, you can try many dif­fer­ent angles.

First, try shoot­ing a pho­to from an angle high­er than eye lev­el. To do so you obvi­ous­ly need to get into a posi­tion high­er than the sub­ject. You can use a lad­der, stairs, a bal­cony, the top of a vehi­cle, or even stand on a chair. These days peo­ple are even fly­ing drones to take aer­i­al pho­tos eas­i­ly and inexpensively.

Sec­ond, try tak­ing a low angle shot. You can do so from a sit­ting, squat­ting, or kneel­ing posi­tion where you can look direct­ly at or up to the sub­ject. These shots enable you to get more of the fore­ground into the pho­to which tends to give pho­tos a dra­mat­ic effect.

Third, take an extreme low angle pho­to. To do so you have to lie on the ground. That means get­ting your phone cam­era close to the soil or the floor. You can get some very dra­mat­ic effects in doing so.

Fourth, try tak­ing macro shots. Many phone cam­eras have excel­lent macro capa­bil­i­ty; that is, you can take good sharp close-ups. Tak­ing close-ups is a lot of work. It usu­al­ly requires you to get in an unusu­al posi­tion – often an uncom­fort­able posi­tion – in order to get a good close-up shot. Nonethe­less, close-up pho­tos can be very dramatic.

Fifth, tak­ing frontal shots can some­times be dra­mat­ic, but typ­i­cal­ly frontal shops do not gen­er­ate as much inter­est as shots from a dif­fer­ent angle; that is, from one side or the oth­er. Thus, tak­ing a pho­to of a build­ing from the left or from the right gives it more of a 3‑D effect and is usu­al­ly more inter­est­ing than tak­ing the same pho­to from the absolute front and cen­ter. Build­ings, of course, are the obvi­ous exam­ple. But tak­ing shots from an angle to the right or the left have the effect of mak­ing your pho­tos more inter­est­ing in many situations.

Sixth, when tak­ing pic­tures of chil­dren, it is often more inter­est­ing to take them from their lev­el rather than yours. That means squat­ting kneel­ing or sit­ting on the ground. The same goes for small ani­mals and oth­er small subjects.

Sev­enth, final­ly, you always have your choice of tak­ing a close-in or a far-out shot. For instance, at a con­cert you can take a close-up shot near the stage and empha­size the action of the per­form­ers. Or you can take a far-back shot away from the stage show­ing the audi­ence, a shot which tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. You can also switch ori­en­ta­tions from the usu­al hor­i­zon­tal to the less com­mon vertical.

Chang­ing the angle of your shoot­ing is a good way to get unusu­al shots and in many sit­u­a­tions more dra­mat­ic shots. It’s easy to do and sim­ply requires remem­ber­ing to do it. Exper­i­ment with it, and see if you can improve your photography.