Vantage Point Photography: How to Create Depth and Impact

And believe it or not, a vantage point isn’t necessarily somewhere high above your subject. Getting low to the ground can provide an equally interesting perspective. Each angle offers its own unique flavour to your photography that you might not expect, so in this article, we’ll look at how different vantage points can help you create depth, strengthen your compositions and achieve the themes you’re aiming to portray. Let’s get started.

The Vantage Points

Let’s take a closer look at the vantage points available to us so that the next time we pull the camera up to our eye, we question whether there might be a better way to take the shot.

Worm’s-eye view: Let’s go from low to high, starting with the viewpoint of a worm. This literally means getting the camera as close to the ground as possible. From here, you can shoot straight ahead or tilt the camera upwards, but either way, you’re crouched right down with the camera placed just above the ground. Traditionally, a worm’s-eye view may have had you with your face almost pressed against the floor to look through the viewfinder, but with modern cameras you can simply tilt the rear screen for a much more comfortable shooting experience. As a side note, as someone with bad knees, this position can still be particularly uncomfortable!

Low-angle: Continuing with positions that are hard on the knees, a low-angle shot involves crouching down but holding the camera a little higher. When I shoot this way, my camera is often around chest height while crouched, with the screen tilted upwards. It’s one of the vantage points I use most often.

Eye-level: The classic vantage point that needs little explanation. However, I will say that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with shooting at eye level. It’s still my number one method of shooting, and not just because of the cramp in my knees from the aforementioned approaches.

High-angle: Not always great for those afraid of heights, but this involves getting above the action and shooting downwards. However, you don’t have to be at the top of a skyscraper to achieve a high angle. I recently wrote an article about how I got some fantastic high-angle shots while shooting in Gangnam, Seoul. It’s a particularly hilly area that allowed me to shoot above the crowded streets, and there were also plenty of staircases leading up to buildings. Even climbing just a few steps gave me a completely different perspective.

Bird’s-eye view: Being at the top of a skyscraper could also give us a bird’s-eye view, because we’re looking almost directly down towards the ground, often close to 90 degrees. This gives us a much flatter view of the scene below. But we can also achieve this by looking over the side of a bridge or even down from a staircase, making it much more doable for those afraid of heights. Drone photography is another obvious example, meaning we can keep our feet firmly and safely on the ground.

High Vantage Points

Now let’s begin up top and look at the advantages of a higher vantage point. As mentioned, when I was shooting in Gangnam, a notoriously busy area of Seoul, it was difficult to get a good view of anything. People and cars were constantly blocking opportunities to capture stories in the streets, and I was close to giving up. It wasn’t until I paid more attention to my surroundings and realised I could get higher, whether at the top of a steep hill or simply by climbing a couple of steps, that the whole scene suddenly became simpler.

Even a small amount of elevation can completely change how we experience a scene. From the viewer’s perspective, they are no longer standing within it but observing it from the outside. That subtle separation can make an image feel more detached, which can greatly benefit certain stories and themes.

One of the other things that surprised me was suddenly noticing patterns. They weren’t visible from street level, but because I now had a higher vantage point, road markings I had barely noticed suddenly emerged and became part of the composition. The same can happen with building formations, rolling hills or even repeating colours that occur naturally throughout a scene.

Lastly, there’s scale. We can get a much better sense of the size and layout of an environment when viewing it from higher up. A long road that disappears from view at eye level can suddenly stretch far into the distance, while crowds, buildings and landscapes become much easier to understand as a whole.

Whether it’s a subtle change in elevation, rising above a crowd or finding a wide-open view of a landscape from high above, the change can have a huge impact on an image. You’re giving the viewer a perspective they may never have considered before, helping your photograph truly stand out.

Low Vantage Points

There are just as many benefits to going in the opposite direction, and although I said it can be tough on the knees at times, shooting from a low vantage point is one of my favourite approaches.

When I shoot in Seoul, I’m surrounded by skyscrapers that tower over the streets, people and cars below, and it’s one of the things that drew me towards street photography in the city in the first place. Then there are the neon signs, which can also be several storeys above street level. To include all of these elements, I often need to shoot from lower down and angle my camera upwards.

This does something crucial for the image: it emphasises scale. While a high vantage point can reveal the scale of an environment by giving us a wider view, a low vantage point can emphasise the height of individual subjects. Buildings suddenly tower over the viewer, while people photographed from below can appear larger and more dominant.

This can make a scene feel imposing and dramatic, but it can also completely change the story we’re telling, which we’ll explore in more detail later.

Use Vantage Points to Create Depth

Vantage points are one of the most useful tools we have for creating more depth in an image. One way to achieve this is simply by finding a clearer view of the scene in front of us. If something completely blocks our view of the background, for example, the image can appear to stop there and our subject may feel cramped within the frame.

By changing our vantage point, we can create clearer separation between the foreground, midground and background. Ideally, the foreground helps guide the eye towards the midground, which is often where our subject sits, while the background continues beyond them and gives the image a greater sense of space.

To maximise this depth after securing a good vantage point, I like to use Light Depth inside Luminar.

This allows me to relight my image within a 3D space. I can darken the foreground slightly to encourage the eye to travel through it before adding light around the midground where my subject sits. The tool intelligently analyses the scene so that the light interacts with the objects within it, helping the result look much more natural.

Match the Angle to the Story

This is where vantage points can have the biggest impact. The angle from which you shoot can completely change the story and emotional meaning of an image.

One of the themes I like to explore when shooting street photography is isolation. To achieve this, I often find a lone figure and use the tall buildings surrounding them to create a tiny person amongst the clutter of the city. A low vantage point works particularly well because it allows me to emphasise the enormous scale of the buildings, making the person appear even smaller and strengthening that feeling of isolation through the stark contrast in size.

This can be achieved from a high vantage point too. Perhaps you’re photographing a crowd but notice an isolated figure standing within an open space, with a patch of light illuminating them and drawing attention to their separation from everyone around them. Alternatively, the higher viewpoint may simply reveal enough empty space around a person to make them appear smaller within the wider scene.

There are plenty of other ways to use vantage points to tell your story. When shooting portraits, for example, the angle plays a huge role in how the subject is perceived. I often like to shoot from slightly lower down. This can make the subject appear taller, more dominant and confident, giving them greater presence within the frame.

Shooting portraits from a higher vantage point can have a very different effect. Depending on the pose, expression and composition, it can make the subject appear smaller or more vulnerable. If that supports the story you’re trying to tell, then the vantage point becomes another tool for delivering that message.

The Bottom Line

Vantage points offer much more than simply giving us a clearer view of a scene. They can help tell a completely different story, create greater depth and reveal structures or patterns that we may never have noticed from eye level.

Low angles are fantastic for emphasising height and making subjects appear more imposing, while higher vantage points can reveal more of the environment, simplify busy scenes and expose patterns hidden from our usual point of view.

So, the next time you’re out shooting, don’t automatically bring the camera straight up to eye level. Look around first. Crouch down, climb a few steps or find somewhere that gives you a completely different perspective. You may be surprised by just how much the depth, story and impact of your photograph changes with you.