Learning Library / Seeing in black and white
Photography lesson · 5 min
Change the relationship by getting low
Leave the familiar eye-level view and meet the subject in its own space.
Eye level is comfortable, which is exactly why I try to leave it. Getting low changes more than the background. It changes my relationship to the subject. With an animal, a child, or anything close to the ground, that shift can create presence instead of observation from above.
What I’m looking for
In the field.
- Lower the camera to the subject’s eye level before deciding on the final composition.
- Watch the background as you descend. A few inches can replace clutter with open sky, ground, or one clean tonal field.
- Keep the nearest feature from becoming exaggerated unless that energy serves the picture.
- Wait for the subject to settle into a natural expression or gesture rather than calling for attention every frame.
- Make one horizontal and one vertical version, keeping the eyes or main gesture in the strongest tonal separation.
Keep this close
What makes it work.
- Relationship
- Camera height signals whether we look down on, meet, or look up toward the subject.
- Background shift
- Lowering the camera changes the horizon and often simplifies the frame.
- Near-far scale
- Close features grow quickly at low, near viewpoints; use that effect consciously.
At your own pace
Try it.
Photograph the same subject standing, kneeling, and with the camera nearly on the ground.
Watch for
Do not focus so completely on the subject that a bright horizon cuts through its head or body.
Photography lesson and photograph by Tony Shepherd (pixbyshep).