Playing with Perceiving: 5 Ways to Add Depth to Your Photos
Written by: Elysia Santos
Ever think that your photos look boring? Or that it’s not striking enough? Then perhaps this guide will help you in your next photo shoot!
Disclaimer: I am not a professional photographer. Just an amateur photographer who is trying to relate what I learned in class to my favorite hobby.
In this guide, I’ll be talking about how to add depth to your photos with the power of psychology! …Or, well, in other words, some of the concepts of depth perception—particularly pictorial cues which are information from 2D pictures that provide information about depth (Goldstein, 2010).
Adding depth to your photos make it look more dramatic, no matter how simple the object or scene you are taking photos of. So, by using pictorial cues to your advantage, it might just give your photograph more impact.
The first four cues I’ll be talking about is included in the list of pictorial cues by Goldstein (2010). The last cue isn’t included in the list, however, according to Mather’s (1996) research, it is also an important cue for depth perception (I’ll expand on that later).
1. Hide and Seek - Occlusion
At times, we might think that objects that are blocking the scenery will ruin the picture. But on the contrary, you can use this to your advantage and use those objects to purposely block or “occlude” the main subject of your photo. Of course, you shouldn’t block the entire photo, but blocking parts of it (e.g. the sides) would give more information on how far the subject really is.
In this case, I used the trees to obstruct the view of Mt. Fuji. And even though Mt. Fuji is partially blocked, it clearly still remains as the main subject of the photo.
2. Spread Out! - Relative Size
We know, by fact, that all these bells are of the same size. But because some of the bells are placed nearer to us and some are placed farther, it gives off a more dynamic feeling.
Imagine having all the bells lined up in the same place. Sure, it would make a nice and interesting photo in its own way (hey, I love being minimalist, too!), but placing the bells in different distances add depth to it.
3. A “Never-ending Journey” - Perspective Convergence
One of my favorite ways to make places in photos look bigger than they actually are is to highlight the convergence of the location. And believe it or not, convergence isn’t really that hard to find–in fact, it’s everywhere!
Notice the invisible “lines” that make it seem like the canal is getting smaller towards the middle of the picture. It gives off “a road that goes on forever” feeling and is a great way to show that there is more to see than what’s in the photo.
This cue is really important in showing depth and is used by many artists, architects, interior designers, etc.
4. Get Close ;D - Texture Gradient
In photos like this, it always seems like the objects that are “nearer” to us seem to have more space in between, and things “farther” seem to be closely packed together.
Find a good angle to show a large quantity (of flowers, people, animals, etc) even if there isn’t that much in reality!
5. Focus, focus, focus! - Blur
An experiment done by Mather (1996) showed that blur provides information about depth as well as other cues. In his experiment, he removed other pictorial cues in simple random-dot images and was able to find that blur also acts as a pictorial cue. The difference between boundaries (of the sharp regions and blurred regions) is used by our visual system to determine depth.
In the past where cameras didn’t exist and the only way to capture an image was through art, it was probably more difficult to create this effect. But in this day and age where cameras and computers have become very high-tech, we can manipulate the blur easily using lenses and other photo editing programs. Many people use the blur to create dramatic effects not only in photographs, but also in movies.
Blurring an image does not only add depth perception to the image (everything behind the focused object looks far, right?), it seems to enhance the details of the subject of focus.
So, how about trying these tricks to make your photos more dramatic? ;)
The photos used were all taken by me at various places in Japan (2015-2016).
References:
Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception (8th ed.). Wadsworth: Cengage Learning.
Mather, G. (1996). Image Blur as a Pictorial Depth Cue. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: 263 169-172. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1996.0027.
