Forced Perspective Photography | Brilliant Photography Examples

Forced perspective is a technique which employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. Have you ever seen those funny photos of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Then you’ve seen forced perspective photography. And it’s easy to re-create. You don’t even need to go to Italy to do it. It only manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera.

In fact, you can try forced perspective just about anywhere using all sorts of props you can find. Follow these few simple tips. And you’ll get started making your own forced perspective photos.

The below are some common techniques used in this type of photography:

Architecture:

Architecture is often one of the main focal points of forced perspective photography. Architecture by its own emission uses perspective to create interesting angles and shapes.

Strange Human Positions:

As humans, we move in conventional ways. We also interact with objects and our surroundings in conventional ways too. We can take these conventions and twist them to create forced perspectives and photos that look like they shouldn’t exist.

Size Relationship:

When we view an object, we have a fixed idea in our brain of what size it should be. We can use this psychological pre-determination for our benefit to create forced perspective images. We can position objects in such a way using perspective, that they appear much larger or smaller than they should be.