Photography Perspective
Perspective in photography refers to the appearance of depth or spatial relationships between objects, their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects in an image.
As objects become more distant, they begin to appear smaller. This phenomenon is caused by perspective. The relationship between distance and apparent height of objects is not a linear pattern. If an object were actually touching the eye, thus being no distance away, it would appear infinitely tall.
For example, the parallel lines of a railway track are perceived by a standing human being as meeting at a distant point at the horizon. A person standing at the corner of a building at ground level sees each of the walls recede to an imaginary point on the horizon. The horizon itself is at the level of the viewer’s eye. The eyelevel determines what a person is able to see and what not. A person standing on the seashore sees the horizon with a lesser amount of sea visible than a person standing on top of a multistoried building.
Thus, perspective in photography may change the way an object looks in size and distance to the camera. Perspective is determined by the relative distance between the objects, but not by focal length.
A popular myth regarding perspective is that wide lens exaggerates or distorts perspective, while telephoto lens compresses it. It is a mistake. The perspective doesn’t change when we move from wide angle to telephoto lens.
The reason why the background or a second object appears to be very far away from the main object when we use wide angle lens is that when we focus closer, the distance between the two objects changes and consequently the proportion between the sizes of both objects will change. The closer object will become bigger and more dominant. Thus the effect of exaggerated perspective is created. It can be used if you want to draw extra attention to the main subject or add an unrealistic view of the scene.
For the same reason, telephoto lens doesn’t create a compressed perspective, but as the distance between the objects shrinks, the difference between the sizes of the objects decreases. Using telephoto lens often brings out an interesting pattern and abstractions.
There are several way that allows the photographer show perspective in an image. The most effective are:
- Blocking
- Relative Size
- Converging Parallel Lines
- Lack of Sharpness or Contrast
Read about each method in the article Composition: Putting Things in Perspective.
Read about the Perspective Distortion and learn how to control it in Perspective Correction.
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