Brief:
Choose a subject in front of a background with depth. Select your shortest focal length and take a close low viewpoint, below your subject. Find a natural point of focus and take the shot.
You’ll see that a very wide lens together with a close viewpoint creates extreme perspective distortion. Gently receding lines become extreme diagonals and rounded forms bulge towards the camera. Space appears to expand. The low viewpoint adds a sense of monumentality, making the subject seem larger than it is, and tilting the camera adds to the effect as vertical lines dramatically converge. Not the ideal combination for a portrait shot!
I chose to do this exercise with the following one, Exercise 2.4, and used the same subject, my wife and her horse, Tigger. I chose to do these exercises in the evening as the sun was setting so as to take advantage of the warm light of the sun which makes Tigger’s coat look richly coloured. I use the “Sun Surveyor” app on my phone to assess the position of the sun and the likely lighting conditions for a shoot like this. I used a small aperture to try and get a deep depth of field, but kept the ISO at 100 so there is some camera and subject movement in some of the images.
The contact sheet for all the images I shot for this particular exercise are at:
I have slightly cropped and made development adjustments in terms of local exposure adjustments to a selection.
In these images the effect of extreme perspective is readily apparent – Tigger’s nose expands and appears disproportionate to his head. However when adopting this close position to a horse my camera was in danger of being eaten and his mouth and nose while looking big actually assume a size proportionate to their importance in self- and camera- preservation.
Andrew Procter 