Low Angle–You Could Never Go Too Low

I forgot my tripod and placed my camera on the ground to take the picture below.

Low angle composition emphasizes the details on the ground, details that are not as visible on the eye-level when you’re in standing position.

Low angle composition entails lowering your tripod to your knees or lower. If you handhold your camera then you may need to bend your knees and waist. When available, you can use the flip out screen and compose with the live view instead looking through the viewfinder and having to bend more.

This composition pattern is also useful if you want to exaggerate the height of a structure (natural or man-made) in the scene. Low on the ground and a wide-angle lens will add some grandness and height to your canyon walls.

Low angle and strong foreground composition patterns are siblings that they’re found together in the same photos often. That’s expected because most objects that you want to use as the foreground lie on the ground.

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