Getting your camera down low is a great way to give viewers of your image a completely different perspective on the world. Not only do low-angle shots provide more interest, but they can also help you get a much more powerful composition, particularly in situations in which the background might be distracting, or if there’s simply too much to fit into the frame.

For this entry in our 30-Day Challenge, we’ve put together three straightforward tips to highlight the value of low-angle compositions. We’ve also thrown in a few sample photos to get your creative juices flowing. Let’s begin!

Emphasize the Foreground

What better way to highlight an interesting foreground than to shoot from the ground? From a standing height, it can be difficult to capture the essence of the foreground, which can diminish the overall interest of the shot. But as you can see in the image above, shooting from a low angle gives us a front row seat to view the textures and lines of the dock. The rough, faded boards also provide a nice counterbalance to the deep blues in the background and the relative smoothness of the landscape beyond the edge of the dock.

Look Up

If you aren’t the type of person that wants to crouch, crawl, and lay on the ground to get a shot, an easy solution is to simply look up.

Looking up has become a popular social media hashtag and for good reason. Just like we enjoy seeing the world from a worm’s eye view, it’s also interesting to see what’s happening above us. Not only does this provide for a unique composition, but it also provides viewers with a better sense of scale. Standing at the base of the buildings in the photograph above and shooting upward gives us a much more interesting shot than one from far off, showing the buildings from the side.

But looking up isn’t just for outdoor shots. In the image above, looking up not only gives viewers a unique perspective of the staircase, but it also gives viewers an interesting way to view the person walking down the stairs. It’s not often that you look up and are able to see the soles of someone’s shoes. This kind of unique composition will hold viewers’ attention.

Avoid Backgrounds

Taking shots from a low angle can also help you avoid visually unappealing background elements. Rather than having a concrete skate park with dozens of other skateboarders in the background of the image above, shooting this image from down low eliminates all that mess and allows the viewer to focus solely on the primary subject.

Low-angle shots also work well when the background is just plain and uninteresting as opposed to ugly or distracting. In the image above of the woman and her dog, the blue background is fairly nondescript. By lowering the perspective from which they took this shot, the photographer is able to incorporate more of the floor, which has much more texture than the background. The lower angle also gets viewers on the same eye level as the woman and her dog, which results in a more intimate photo than had the photographer shot the image at a steep downward angle.

Practice and Participate!

As we’ve seen in the sample images in this lesson, altering the perspective from which you shoot can result in a much more interesting and engaging photo than if you take your photos from a standing position, looking out at your eye level. Getting down low allows you to highlight foreground elements, as well as isolate your subject from an uninteresting or ugly background. Looking up also gives you plenty of fodder for images that depict the world in a way that’s unexpected.

Now it’s your turn to get out there and participate in today’s challenge! Think about subjects that you normally see on an everyday basis – buildings, trees, or even people – that might become more interesting if you photograph them from a low angle. Then, upload your favorite image to the forum for this challenge to show off how creative you can be!