A Good Example Of Differences In Perspective

The Golden Driller with a relatively normal perspective.
Everything seems to be in correct proportion to everything
Else in the frame. (click to enlarge)

Earlier this year, while on my road trip, we stopped in Tulsa, Oklahoma to see the various Route 66 associated sights.  One of them was “The Golden Driller.”  This 76 ft. statue made from concrete and steel sits outside their convention center.  A facsimile also appears on the state flag.

I photographed this iconic statue with a few different lenses and several perspectives.  After looking at the image files, I thought highlighting these two images make a great example of the same subject shown with far different perspectives.

When we photograph, most of us use zoom lenses.  We ‘kind of’ pick out a suitable composition then ‘crop’ the image in-camera using the zoom lens’s various focal lengths.  Zooming in or out does not change perspective, it only crops.  The spatial relations among the objects within the frame remains the same.

However, when we use single focal lengths and move back or forth to achieve a suitable composition, we do change the spatial relationships among the objects in our composition.  The perspective clearly changes.  

The perspective changed because a) I changed my
position and b), I used a shorter focal length.  Now
The sizes of the various aspects of the image
seem way out of proportion.
(click to enlarge)

Another example is a head and shoulders portrait made using the very wide angle on a phone.  It looks terrible and distorts the persons features.  In order to capture just the head and shoulders you have to move so close that, actual distance-wise, the nose is much closer to the camera than the subject’s eyes and it looks overly large.  The face will also bend backwards as you look back to the ears.  Terrible.

But if you stand back and use a longer focal length lens on your phone, the face’s proportions look more natural as the distance from the camera to the nose is only slightly closer than the distance from the camera to the ears.

Just a few thoughts on photographic perspective.

Here are a couple of previous post I wrote about this topic if you are interested:

https://www.thewanderinglensman.com/2014/07/zooming-with-your-feet-versus-lens.html

https://www.thewanderinglensman.com/2019/02/zooming-with-your-lens-versus-changing.html

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

All content on this blog is © 2013-2025 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.