One great way to inject some interest in our photography is to get down and take a worms eye view of the world. By shooting from a low point of view, you instantly get a different perspective that challenges the viewer to think more about the photograph.
I love photographs that make the ordinary look interesting. The shot above was taken of my wife on a cold, winter trip to the beach. The tide was out and the beach was incredibly bleak which forced be to think about composition in order to get an interesting shot. The further we walked out to find the sea (it was about a mile out), the more she became worried about spoiling her precious Ugg boots – boom, suddenly I had the idea for this shot.
Get Low in Low Light
Sometimes getting down low is essential in low light. In the shot below I was shooting at about midnight and didn’t have a tripod. The only way to avoid massive amounts of motion blur was to rest the camera on something solid, which for the composition I wanted (with St Pauls being in the middle of the frame) ended up being the floor.
I shot this using the infamous Canon 50mm f1.8 fully wide open at f1.8. Despite this the exposure was 1/2 second, definitely too slow to hand hold the shot. To be honest I think the shot works better with the low point of view than if I’d used a tripod to get a more traditional composition.
Watch Out for Focus
If you’re shooting with a DSLR then you’ll need to be careful of your focus. With your camera’s lens being so close to the ground you camera’s auto focus can easily incorrectly focus in the wrong place, usually only a few center meters in front of the lens.
When shooting like this I find it easier to use manual focus. If you’re not comfortable using manual then it might help to select one focus point, at the top of the viewfinder, and ensure your camera isn’t pointed down at the ground.
Getting the right focus on the above picture of the wild dog was particularly interesting. I was shooting with a Lomo LCA which fixed focal range meant I had to get the camera exactly 80cm from the dog’s nose to ensure a sharp photo.
My subject was a street dog in the Vietnamese countryside so I wasn’t sure exactly how he’d react to having his photo taken! As I inched down to take the shot I was convinced the dog was going to go for me – lucky for me he didn’t and i managed to get exactly 80cm from his nose! BTW – if you’re wondering about the wild colors in this shot it’s because i cross processed the film.
Composing Low Down Shots
Get down and dirty – Shooting at such a low angle means that composition of your shot can be a bit tricky if you don’t have a vari-angle LCD screen. While you can get good results by guessing in our opinion it pays to get down on the floor and compose the shot normally, like you would if standing. For the Ugg boot shot above I ended up covered in wet sand but i definitely think it was worth it.
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