Picture Inspiration- Week 13 - From the Ground Up

One of the things that I found changed my photography almost immediately was changing my perspective.  We often shoot from right where we are...standing up looking at an object.  There are so many more ways to look at the world around us and completely change the feel of it by changing where you position the camera.  I love to get down on the ground and shoot images from that level. I've been known to climb on a ladder and shoot down on an object or lay on my back and shoot up. I love getting on my stomach to photograph little kids as that puts me right at their eye level and you get an entirely different feel to the image.  Try it sometime...you must might be surprised by the results.

This week's assignment was to shoot From The Ground Up.  Taking a photograph from this perspective can give the viewer the feeling that they have an insects view.  A great subject for this perspective is flowers. But, I wanted to do something a little different this week instead.    This past Friday night, my family and I went to see our cousin, Ariel Friedman, play her cello with another fiddle player named Hanneke Cassel.  The performance featured mainly Scottish fiddle music and was truly outstanding. (Another blog post coming about that night in the very near future).  As I watch Ari play her beautiful instrument, I kept thinking I wanted to photograph the cello from the bottom up.  But, as you can imagine that might be rather awkward with her sitting there!  :)  During the intermission, she laid the cell down on it's side on the stage and I jumped on the opportunity.  This is the shot I wanted, albeit horizontal instead of vertical, but I still really like it!

I have a few other images I've been really happy with from this perspective over the past couple of years. This past February we had an incredible snow storm - 19 inches!  The world was completely white and no one was driving anywhere. It took awhile for the snow plows to make their way around the city.  In walking down the street through the snow, I dropped on to my stomach to give the perspective of what the road looked like. After I was laying in the middle of road, I realized that probably wasn't my best plan, but I snapped the shot anyway. And honestly, there wasn't a car to be seen. But still....I'm glad I did it.

Last April, a friend and I went to the Arborteum to take photos of the amazing daffodils in bloom at that time.  I stuck my camera underneath one of the blooms and shot up into the light.  I then added a few textures and gave it this oil painting quality. This remains one of my all time favorite images!

Finally, I took this shoot last week while waiting for a client to arrive for a shoot. These were such interesting magenta and yellow flowers I couldn't resist taking a few photos.  This one, again, I put the camera underneath the flowers and shot upwards.  I love the effect this creates.

So, what are you going to  photograph from the ground up?