LS1PL3
Introduction to photography - Learning about Viewpoint
In photography terms, the viewpoint means the place where the camera is looking from.
The most used viewpoint is from our normal standing height (we call this eye level). A
simple way to change our viewpoint is to crouch down low, or stand on tip toes. Doing this
each time you take a photograph will give you a more unusual
view of the scene and offer variation in your photography.
The position or viewpoint from which we see an object will
emphasise or change features and therefore affect the look and
feel of the picture. As a general rule, if your viewpoint is high, it
will make the subjects lower down look smaller – see left.
A low viewpoint will make the subjects look larger – see the staircase below
Snapper tasks for learners
1. Ask the children to practise taking the same picture from different viewpoints. They
could try one at eye level, one crouching down pointing upwards, and one on tip
toes pointing downwards at the subject. Ask them how the different viewpoints
change the story in the picture.
See below for 15 minute (bitesize) and 2 hours or longer (BIG PICTURE) lesson plans
on this topic.
Bitesize Lesson Plan on
What’s your viewpoint?
Session summary. At the end of the session, children will have the
opportunity to take photographs from a variety of photographic
viewpoints.
Activity
Materials/Resources
Digital camera for each As a class, discuss what opportunities there are to get different
viewpoints to take photographs (safely of course).
pair.
Empty classroom or
school
hall
where
children
can
take
photographs from a
number of different
viewpoints.
Ask the children to work in pairs.
Give the children 10 minutes to go to the school hall or an empty
classroom where they should take 5 photographs from a number of
different viewpoints (crouching, standing on tip toes, through a
keyhole, under a desk, round a corner, through a glass bottle bottom).
Now ask the pairs to get together with another pair and swap cameras.
They each scroll through the other pairs’ photographs.
They each have to write down exactly where the 5 photographs were
taken, for example “from under Mrs. Brown’s desk or “on the top step
of the stage”.
The group with the most correct answers is the winner. The winning
group could be presented with a Snapper Certificate.
New words we
Viewpoint, eye level.
have
learned
in
this
session
are:
BIG PICTURE Lesson Plan on
Is it a bird, is it a plane? – seeing a different viewpoint
Session summary: At the end of the session, children will have
had the opportunity to photograph a range of objects from
unusual viewpoints.
Materials/Resources
Activity
Digital camera – 1 per Following on from the class project – what’s your viewpoint – this
child.
session encourages children to explore different viewpoints (or
ways of seeing) objects around school or home.
This activity could be
done as a homework Ask the children to photograph 3 interesting shaped objects from
project.
an unusual viewpoint. Encourage them to be creative in their
viewpoints such as photographing something from directly above,
or perhaps from directly underneath.
The idea is that the photographs have been taken in such a way it
is a challenge to recognise what the objects are.
Each child should save their 3 photographs on a memory stick and
they could be projected to the class.
In class, children could be divided into teams to guess what the
images in the other team’s photographs are.
New words
Viewpoint.
we
have
learned
in
this
session
are: