Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, originally uploaded by DaveWilsonPhotography.

Given that our eyes are positioned in the front of our heads and look more or less straight ahead from about 5 or 6 feet above the ground, it seems that the vast majority of photographs are taken from exactly this perspective. It’s a trap I fall into frequently so I have to remind myself to look for different perspectives and see if I can come up with unusual images by repositioning the camera away from the typical, eye-level, straight ahead line.

Look up. Look down. Get on top of something or crouch down. Get really close to your subject with a wide angle lens or shoot something from far away with a telephoto. All of these will change the perspective of a picture in one way or another and offer you the chance to create an interesting and different view of what may otherwise be a rather mundane subject.

Hey, if you’re feeling really radical, you can even tilt the camera so that it’s not parallel or perpendicular to the horizon!