Today's blog is all about a sense of scale.
Different perspectives and different lenses on cameras, can give no real clue to how large or small a pet might be. My own style is to focus on chest up photos. Unless you are familiar with various breeds, you will not get an idea of the size of an animal from a head shot.
What to do? Simple. Add a person.
Different perspectives and different lenses on cameras, can give no real clue to how large or small a pet might be. My own style is to focus on chest up photos. Unless you are familiar with various breeds, you will not get an idea of the size of an animal from a head shot.
What to do? Simple. Add a person.
Adding a person to the photo is often a way to gain perspective on the real scale of things. Inside the studio, I will often seat both owner and dog on the same surface. And, yes, this pup IS really that big!
In an outdoor environment, pulling back from the photo and taking in a larger area, again with a person, gives a "normal vision" perspective on the size of things. I used a 70-200mm lens for the shot below, which actually was much larger. I cropped it down as to not overwhelm the subjects. You are able to easily see the size of the dog, relative to his surroundings.
In an outdoor environment, pulling back from the photo and taking in a larger area, again with a person, gives a "normal vision" perspective on the size of things. I used a 70-200mm lens for the shot below, which actually was much larger. I cropped it down as to not overwhelm the subjects. You are able to easily see the size of the dog, relative to his surroundings.
Even when using a lens which may cause some distortion, like a 24-70mm at a wide angle, adding recognizable items for our human eye to land on, can help with the scale of things in terms of our pets. This image was taken a number of months ago, but it is one I had not edited.
It seemed perfect for this blog theme, because our Billie is not only set against the feet of my husband, but she is measurable against the green railing and buildings of Dalton, a familiar sight to anyone from my area. Can you guess how many pounds Billie weighs from this photo?
It seemed perfect for this blog theme, because our Billie is not only set against the feet of my husband, but she is measurable against the green railing and buildings of Dalton, a familiar sight to anyone from my area. Can you guess how many pounds Billie weighs from this photo?
I am looking forward to the blog circle today to see what other tricks fellow photographers might use to gain a sense of scale. Join me by starting with Tracy Allard of of Penny Whistle Photography fetching portraits in Coppell and surrounding communities in the Dallas - Fort Worth metroplex. Look for the links at the bottom of each blog post to move to the next blog, until you find yourself right here, back where you started. Enjoy! Happy Memorial Day weekend! I hope you celebrate the unofficial start of summer on a GRAND scale!
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