An Exercise to Improve Your Perspective as a Photographer

Photography Tips

Everyone usually has humble beginnings as a photographer, and they’ll be sure to tell you that fact when asked. Finding ways to improve involve going out to shoot whatever interests you and finding multiple ways to do so. Photographer David Bergman has some tips on how to be a better photographer by seeing things from a different perspective:

In this case, he urges his viewers to try an assignment he was faced with during his time in school that still helps him to this day.

1. Pick an inanimate object around you.
2. Shoot 25 individual images, capturing every single photograph from a different perspective.
3. Only use one lens. You can’t change lenses or use the zoom function in any of your shots.

Bergman used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 35mm lens in this video to capture his 25 images. It’s important to move around a lot, completing a full circle around the object if you can. Make sure to shoot from as many different angles as possible: get down low, get above the object, capture it from far away, close up, extremely close up, underneath, above it. This task should only take you about 10 minutes, but it forces you to learn quickly about different perspectives and details.

“He gave us each a roll of film and we had to use that entire roll of film and make different pictures of that object from every possible angle and perspective that we could think of.”