Vanishing Point - Add Depth and Perspective to Your Images

A good number of years ago I had an art teacher who taught the class about an artistic technique called Vanishing Point. Simply stated Vanishing Point (VP) is a way to create a 3-dimensional look on a flat plane. It is accomplished by having all of the 'Lines' pointing to a distant point in such a way to make them appear to converge at that point.

In photography applying this technique is an effective way to provide added depth and perspective to your images. The nature of a photograph already uses VP to a degree simply because you already capture a 3-D scene onto a flat plane. What I am referring to is to purposefully use light and angles to generate a greater sense of perspective and depth to our images. There are a great number of ways to do this, but we are going to look at a few specific examples to illustrate the concept.

Take the image of the canola field above. As a panoramic it offers a good example of how to use VP to good effect. The image was created using 4 or 5 images stitched together. The clouds are streaming inline and appear to be converging to a single point in the distance. The road on the left provides a classic example of a converging point. The overall look of the image provides a tremendous sense of perspective. It would be difficult to obtain this look with a single image except possibly by using a very wide angle lens.

On the right we have another image of a Kentucky back road. It offers a classic look of converging lines and VP along with a sense of mystery and nostalgia. Sometimes by changing the angle of the camera you can enhance the appearance of converging lines like this one did. As a portrait frame is works quite well, however if shot as a landscape, the VP effect would have been reduced in this situation. It is the long straight line of the road that provides the VP and when coupled with the rows of trees on either side, it provides a nice sense of depth.

Vanishing Point does not always need to be demonstrated using straight lines. Sometimes, curved lines are effective. The image of the back road provides a small sense of how that works, but the next image is a better example.

Here is another Kentucky back road that effectively uses the curve of the road and fence row to provided a great deal of depth. The VP is easily detected as your eye is drawn deep into the image by the use of those curved lines. Fences are especially good at providing a depth perspective. The key is have it anchored near the front of the image and then allow it to extend across and into the scene without actually exiting the landscape.

A great way create VP is to use artificial lights like speedlights. Two things make the next image of an F-4 Phantom effective: use of color, and use of Vanishing Point. The placement of the lights generated a forward movement of the shadows. The placement of the camera positioned the aircraft in such a way as to point the hardware attached to the wings toward a vanishing point behind the aircraft. Also by centering the nose of the aircraft near the central point of the image, everything else by default moves behind it and follows the VP lines. The Vanishing Point of the lines generated by the wing hardware converges almost exactly where the nose point is if you extend the lines backward. In this case, the alignment was a happy accident, but one that helped make the image as powerful as it turned out. The aircraft provides a powerful appearance of moving toward you.

Using Vanishing Point to provide a sense of depth and perspective to your images is an effective way to generate unique and exciting photographs. It also connects you as an artists to the master artists of old who discovered how to use Vanishing Point to create realistic looking works of art.

The Symphony of Flowing Waters - Exactly What I Need

Inside most of us, including myself, there resides a restless nature, a feeling or desire to describe it more accurately, but a need none the less to step away from our everyday existence and reconnect with what is natural. Few are the outlets we realistically have that will allow us to do such a thing, but the desire to do so never fully subsides from its normal dormant status. One of the best and most relaxing of those outlets is to simply sit beside a flowing stream and listen to its musical waters.

As a photographer, I am constantly seeking out natural beauty. From time to time I will often lay my camera aside and allow the simple beauty of nature to soothe what ills rust inside of me. There are times I leave my camera at home and venture out simply because I need to get away, often replacing the camera with a fishing rod. There is a hypnotic aura that accompanies the sound of the fishing line as it whirls off the spool and when the small spinner lands with a soft splash a few yards away. I relish the familiar clink of the bail, the soft purr of the gears as you turn the handle to retrieve the lure, then the anticipated strike along with the fight of a noble fish, which in my case, I always return to freedom after admiring its fighting spirit.

After a short while, I will often place the rod to one side and pause to simply listen to the wind as it searches for the tops of the trees and to hear the rushing of water as it tumbles over and through a spit of rocks. It is sounds, music, such as these, this symphony of flowing water and searching wind, that quiets the soul. Sometimes, most times, it is exactly what I need.

A Time Alone to Listen

By the time I hiked the quarter mile or so to the rocky outcropping the bottom half of my pant legs were soaked from the morning dew. I was panting heavier than the short hike should have induced, but the footing was uneven and the prairie grasses grabbed at and hindered my progress making the task of hiking much more difficult than one might expect. The familiar outcropping jutted from the earth along the edge of a rise that fell away toward a distant arroyo and somewhere down there was heard the morning yelps and howls of a coyote family returning from their evening hunt.

The ever present Oklahoma breeze was once again starting to stir the landscape, a landscape magnificent in its own way, a place where what once was, yet still remains, a place almost lost, yet now protected held now in reserve as one of the last token, large scale examples of Tallgrass Prairie. Along the horizon the morning glow cast the pale tint of pre-dawn where the slumbering cool of the day lingered as long as it could before being driven away by the heat of the sun.

I removed my camera backpack, gently laying it next to one of the larger stone emplacements, then I sat on the smoothest place I could find and let the fog of sleepiness lift from my eyes. As the morning progressed, prairie birds blended their songs into an orchestrated performance that somehow seemed to play out in a perfect rhythm and the prairie became alive once again.

With the rising sun, the veil of pale darkness that hovered over the land filled with color. Around me, in all directions, no sign of human presence appeared. It was as though I stepped through a window to travel to an earlier time where the only sounds were of the prairie, the only scene were from the prairie, and the only purpose was to find space where one could spend a quality life moment...time alone.

If the prairie could speak it would say, "Come...listen to my song...a song written just for you." Haunted I am, at times, by the song of the prairie, a song seeking a place to reside inside my soul hoping to discover a new outlet of expression. I must again someday, return and rediscover A Time Alone to Listen.