Rocks at Low Tide, Maui, Hawai'i
Where to stand is one of my two rules about photography. (When to press the shutter button is my other rule.) If you know where to stand and when to press the shutter, you have increased the chances of making a nice photograph. I thought about this the other day because one of my co-workers is an aspiring wedding photographer. Her viewpoint will be unique because she is not even five feet tall.
Cameras must be moved left or right, forward or back and lastly, (and maybe most importantly), up or down. Most photographers ignore the up and down component of camera placement and the eye-level camera position is responsible for 99.99% of all boring photographs ever made.
I learned about camera height a long time ago photographing my children’s swim meets. I quickly figured out unless I got the camera down to the children’s eye level the photographs looked terrible. I spent a lot of time over several summers on my knees and sitting on the ground to make sure my photographs were from the children’s point of view. When I was photographing the Alkabo School as part of “A Sense of the Seasons,” my first photographs taken at adult height weren’t very good. Once I remembered to lower the camera to a child’s height, the compositions looked “right”.
Where to stand also includes height above the ground, a very important component of camera placement.
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