Getting Low: What Changes When You Kneel
Okay. Last lesson we talked about why eye-level-and-back looks flat. Today we fix it, and the fix is almost embarrassingly simple. You get down.
I mean that literally. Knees on the floor, or crouched, or sitting on the ground if that's what it takes. Most people photograph their whole life from the same height, standing, phone up around chin level, five or six feet back from whatever they're shooting. That's not a rule anybody wrote down. It's just where your arm naturally is when you lift the phone. But it means every photo you take has the same boring vantage point, and boring vantage points are a big part of why a photo of something nice ends up looking like nothing.
Here's the thing. A kid's face looks different from the kid's own eye level than it does from yours looking down at them. A flower looks different from the side than from above. A plate of food looks different if you get low and shoot across it instead of straight down like you're photographing evidence. Getting low changes the background too, which is half the reason it works. Stand up and shoot down at your dog and you get floor. Kneel down to the dog's level and you get whatever's behind the dog at eye height, which is usually more interesting and further away, which blurs out a little and gives the whole photo some depth.
How to actually do this
- Pick something ordinary. A cup of coffee, a kid's shoe, the dog, a plant on the windowsill. Doesn't need to be special. That's kind of the point of this whole exercise.
- Take one photo the normal way first. Standing, phone at chest height, however far back feels natural. This is your control photo. You'll want it for comparison in a minute.
- Now get down to the subject's level. If it's low to the ground, you're getting low too. Knees, or crouching, or lying on the floor if you have to. I've been on my stomach on the kitchen floor for a photo of a fabric scrap. It's not dignified. Nobody cares.
- Get closer than feels comfortable. This is the "get close" half of it. Most people also shoot from too far back, so you're fixing two problems at once. Step in until you think you're too close, then maybe half a step more.
- Tap to focus on the subject (you know this move by now) and take the shot.
- Compare the two. Standing photo, then kneeling-and-close photo. Almost every time, the second one has more life in it. More often than not people are a little surprised by how big the difference is for such a small change.
That's really the whole lesson. It's not complicated. It's just not something your body does on its own, so you have to make yourself do it on purpose until it becomes a habit.
A quick real caution
If you're getting low near a table edge, a stove, a step, whatever, just pay attention to where your knees and hands are landing. I've backed into a chair leg more than once trying to line up a shot instead of looking where I was going. Nothing dramatic happened, but it could have. Look at the shot, then look at the floor, then look at the shot again.
The quilt in the closet
I have an indigo quilt top that's been sitting folded in my upstairs closet for about two years. Never finished it. Ran out of steam somewhere around the borders and it's been waiting ever since, low-grade guilt every time I open that closet door.
A while back I had this idea that if I photographed it well, really well, I'd fall in love with it again and finally finish the thing. So I pulled it out, laid it across the bed, got down low near the corner of it instead of standing over the whole thing, and got in close on the piecing. Good light, morning light, the kind we talked about weeks ago. And the photo came out lovely. Genuinely one of the nicer quilt photos I've taken.
Didn't finish the quilt. It's still up there. But I look at that photo sometimes and I like it on its own, separate from the guilt about the actual object. That's not nothing. A good photo can be worth having even when it doesn't solve the problem you took it to solve.
My opinion on this, since we're here
I'll say again what I said back in the modes-and-filters lesson: I'd rather you have a clean, well-lit photo of something ordinary, shot from a good angle, than a moody blurred-background portrait-mode photo of nothing in particular. Getting low and close is free. It doesn't cost you an app or a setting or a new phone. It costs you getting your knees dirty for four seconds. At the end of the day that's a pretty good trade.
Before next time
Find three ordinary things around your house this week and photograph each one twice, once standing, once low and close. You don't need to show anyone. Just notice which one you'd rather look at.