Mix up your Angles

So in my last musing I spoke about how by simply changing your metering you can get different looks to your photography. This article is about another simple method to give your images a professional feel by simply just changing the angle at which you take a photograph.

Most amateurs and beginners nearly always take a photograph at their normal standing height, they see a subject they want to photograph, raise the camera to their eye and “click”. OK, most of the time this will do but sometimes you want to add a bit of interest, give a different look, add a new perspective.

A really good example from my own photography is this shot of my hallway.

OK it’s just a hallway, but imagine how boring it would have looked if I had taken it from my normal standing height? With me lying on the floor it now takes on a whole different dynamic, there’s interest, it engages the viewer, it has drama, there’s an almost Hitchcockian, cinematic feel to it now. I often show this to couples on a wedding consultation to show how sometimes there isn’t a great shot, there isn’t a tear in your grannies eye, sometimes at a wedding there’s a bit of a lull with not a lot going on but I still have to get a good photograph. I remember showing it to a couple, he was a policeman and she worked at a childrens nursery. I explained about how it has a different feel and he said “yeah it almost looks like a scene of crime now, like the last view of a dying man” (sorry to bring up death on a website about wedding photography!)” and she said “that’s interesting, I saw it as though it was the view of a baby or a toddler crawling”. So two different people were viewing the same photograph of an everyday scene but interpreting it to their own worldview, brilliant.

So why does this taking photographs at different angles have such a powerful visual effect on the viewer? Well quite simply it’s because the viewer is not used to seeing the scene that way in their everyday life. This makes them look more closely, it gives the scene more interest, makes it more dynamic, more engaging and that’s what you want, photographs that engage the viewer.

At many of the weddings I attend there’s always a few guests with good cameras (I always light heartedly think to myself, pressures on!). In one way though I like it because if I can only take the sort of photographs a guest with a good camera can take then I shouldn’t be photographing weddings professionally. With modern cameras it’s so easy to get a well exposed photograph, back in the film days this was a skill in itself so it was enough for a wedding photographer to just get well exposed images, not any more. One of my little maxims I quote to myself when taking a photograph of an everyday wedding scene is “how would a guest with a good camera take this shot?” this then forces me to do it differently, so I kneel, crouch down, lie down, stand on a chair, a bench, a table, lift my camera above my head, I get high, get low, I mix up my angles.

Next time you go to take a photograph of an everyday scene remember to mix up your angles.

Here are some examples from my wedding and portrait photography.