The vast majority of photos you see and take are done at adult eye levels of around 5 to 6 feet. You look at your photos and compare them to others and there’s not much difference. How can you make your photos standout from the millions of photos taken at Walt Disney World every year? One way is to shoot from different angles. Another is to use your knees. Yep, those joints in your legs do bend. Some people’s better than others.
To demostrate, I’m going to use statues of the Disney brothers found in the Magic Kingdom. The first one is Roy Disney sitting on a bench with Minnie Mouse at the head of Main Street, USA. (NOTE: During the Christmas season, you can find Roy and Minnie over by Town Hall.) I bent down, knees cracking and framed this photo vertically to include Roy, Minnie and the Main Street shops, Confectionery and The Chapeau, to the right of the statue. Using an aperture of f/20, I got maximum depth of field so everything is in sharp focus from front to back.
Minnie Mouse shares a park bench with Roy Disney in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/60s, f/20, ISO 200, EV +0.3, 18mm focal length
Moving on down Main Street, USA to the Hub area in front of Cinderella Castle, the Partner’s statue depicts Walt Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand. This area is often congested with people sitting, taking pictures (there’s always a PhotoPass Photographer stationed here) and walking around the statue. It’s hard to get a good clean shot unless you are in the Magic Kingdom either very early in the morning or very late at night. On this day, I was neither so to eliminate as many fellow guests as I could from my composition, I got in close and low. Using the zoom lens, I found the 24mm focal length cleaned up the edges of most everyone.
Partner’s Statue in the Magic Kingdom.
Nikon D70/18-200VR, 1/100s, f/16, ISO 200, EV +1.0, 24mm focal length
Next time you are in a creative bind, try lowing yourself and looking around. I think you’ll find it opens up a whole new perspective to your photography. Back to my knee exercises.
Hi Scott,
One thing I notice on your photos is that you often use some exposure compensation (e.g. +0.3, etc).
How do you know when to use this?
Thanks,
Boris
Scott replies: Great question, Boris! My camera tends to underexpose a little and I found +0.3 brings it back to what it should be. Other cameras may overexpose and people set a negative compensation. I wrote about exposure compensation in this blog (copy and paste the link into your browser):
http://land.allears.net/blogs/photoblog/2007/08/photographic
_innoventions_dial.html
Or search for ‘compensation” in the Search box.