The importance of scale in your photos

When I say scale, what do you think off? Do you picture the thing in you keep in the bathroom that you never want to step on? Well in this case, I am referring to something in an image that is a guide to how big or small everything else is. As Local Guides, this is important because there are many things we photograph, but we also want to show how big they are in real life.

Often, to make the size of an object appear bigger, food companies will use macro lenses to magnify an object to be larger than life for their advertising.

One very easy fix for something like that is to include in the image something that people know the size of. For instance, you could include a penny or a quarter.

But sometimes the subject of your photograph is much too large for a quarter to show the size. This is when you need to get creative! Find things to put in your image that we know the size of.

One example of this is a photograph I took on a trip to the Badlands, SD. If you notice, there is a mule deer standing in the left off the frame. In this image, I really wanted to show the scale of the location (that it was really really big), so finding that mule deer really brought the whole image together for me.

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Most of the time we can make a quick calculation on how large an object or structure is but having a person near it. We all know how tall a person of average height is , so its quick and easy to almost subconsciously make a quick judgement .

So if you want to show the vastness or the hugeness of something , give your viewer something that they are familiar with to see the scale

By Paul Watson

Click here to See some of my other great Posts - How I survived living on an old boat for three years

I love it! And yes you are 100% correct!