Bottom line here is that most photos including a very high percentage of amateur photos are taken by a standing photographer with the camera held at eye-level. With the advent of cell phone cameras there has been a jump of photos shot by a sitting photographer but I think you'll find most of those taken at the eye-level of the person sitting across from them at the table.
So what difference does it make? Elevation is a key to controlling the background. In the included image I found myself with a very photogenic boat filled with flowers, a nice piling arrangement and a beautiful blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
My problem was including all of those items in the same photo. Shooting from the aforementioned eye-level would have created a shot of the flowers but not much of the boat and a not-very-pretty shot of the pilings. The background would have been the lawn which at this time of the year was not a lush green.
By lying on the ground and using the 24mm end of my zoom I was able to feature the pilings, include the boat from an angle with included both the form of the boat and the flowers without more green than flowers, and include the sky as a primary background with visible clouds but a plain blue sky behind the pilings.
In this case I chose to create an HDR image with 5 shots but since I had a polarizer on my lens to pop up the sky I have a nicely exposed image that would stand well without the HDR. Comparing the two shots side by side I thought the HDR shot had the edge so I included it here.
I remember a shot I took several years ago in Ottawa, Canada that I can't seem to locate now in which I was shooting one of the beautiful government buildings from across the street in front of it to get the building arranged as I wanted it. A standing up shot included the street and its traffic, but at the edge of the grass area on which I was standing was a border of a flowering hedge. By sitting on the ground I was able to hide the street and the traffic behind the hedge and create a nice bottom border of flowers for the building and hide what I didn't want in the photo.
At the other end of the scale there is the hail Mary shot which is taken with your arms extended above your head and the camera aimed (by guess and experience) at your subject. With this you can get over people and objects near you and if you are aiming down use the ground as a background which may be a nice uncomplicated way of simplifying your image.
Remember try higher and lower instead of always shooting at eye-level, and... good shooting. Again comments and questions are welcome, but sometimes I forget to check for a few days so don't panic.
By lying on the ground and using the 24mm end of my zoom I was able to feature the pilings, include the boat from an angle with included both the form of the boat and the flowers without more green than flowers, and include the sky as a primary background with visible clouds but a plain blue sky behind the pilings.
In this case I chose to create an HDR image with 5 shots but since I had a polarizer on my lens to pop up the sky I have a nicely exposed image that would stand well without the HDR. Comparing the two shots side by side I thought the HDR shot had the edge so I included it here.
I remember a shot I took several years ago in Ottawa, Canada that I can't seem to locate now in which I was shooting one of the beautiful government buildings from across the street in front of it to get the building arranged as I wanted it. A standing up shot included the street and its traffic, but at the edge of the grass area on which I was standing was a border of a flowering hedge. By sitting on the ground I was able to hide the street and the traffic behind the hedge and create a nice bottom border of flowers for the building and hide what I didn't want in the photo.
At the other end of the scale there is the hail Mary shot which is taken with your arms extended above your head and the camera aimed (by guess and experience) at your subject. With this you can get over people and objects near you and if you are aiming down use the ground as a background which may be a nice uncomplicated way of simplifying your image.
Remember try higher and lower instead of always shooting at eye-level, and... good shooting. Again comments and questions are welcome, but sometimes I forget to check for a few days so don't panic.
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