Finding the Eye level in any photo
2yr
@njones
Hello, I have a question about finding the eye level in photos. I have seen many examples with boxes and buildings, which is fairly simple to understand. But when there are no obvious boxes I find it hard to know where the eye level is, especially when there are rounded objects. I've attached an image that I'm struggling with. Where is the eye level on this? is it at about head height of the deer on the left? Does anyone have any advice or resources?
Alright, so when your view of the horizon is unobstructed (like if you're at sea) the eye level will be at the horizon.
A good way to think about finding the horizon when it's obstructed is that you'll be looking up at anything above the horizon, and looking down at anything below it.
A fun exercise to try is going outside and looking at things while thinking about where eyelevel is, and moving your head up and down to see how that change affects what you see. I got it from Ernest's norling's perspective made easy, a very helpful book for learning perspective.
Hope that was helpful! please let me know if you have questions :)
2yr
You may know some of this already but I feel like I should start that the very beginning. When you're standing head facing straight out, imagine you have a laser beam shooting out your eyes. The safe, harmless type of laser beam. As you may know laser beams can go for a long distance before the light entirely disperses. In our imagination world your eye laser beam is parallel with the mostly flat ground. What I would like you to take note of is your "eye level" and the horizon vanish at the same spot wayyyyy out in the distance. This is called the vanishing point. The horizon is -not- where the land "falls off". In most pictures the horizon/vanishing point/eye level are located at the same spot where the land "falls off", but to understand perspective drawing you need to understand that the horizon line/vanishing point, eye level and the spot where the land falls off are all different things, even when they're located in the same area.
For instance,lets go back to imagining your "eye level" laser beam, and the mostly flat ground. But this time imagine that mostly flat ground has large hills about 10 miles out. When we say horizon we're not talking about the top of those hills. Remember Your "eye level" laser beam is still parallel to the "Mostly flat" ground. Because your "eye level" and "horizon" are parallel they technically never ever meet. In art we work with perception, and so perceptually as objects are smaller as they get farther away it only appears that the ground plane and our eye level meet at some spot in the far far distance. And this spot is now somewhere behind the large hills. This is the vanishing point, and we use this perceptual constant along with geometry to create a sense of depth.
Imagine you're standing on the tallest sky scraper in the world or the highest mountain, you're looking out over a vast ocean and a vast sky. Far off into the distance the sky and ocean eventually they meet right? Outside of the art world people call this the horizon, this word is arbitrary. Inside the art world we use it slightly differently. Horizon defined perceptually is the limit of observable reality/universe. Along this line of thinking, all people, except for those who believe the earth is flat, know that the line were the ocean meets the sky is not the end of the earth, what we see is the curvature of the earth and the sky which is atmosphere reflecting light back. If you were to able to see straight through that you would be looking out into space instead of the place where the ocean meets the sky.
Say you are a 10 ft tall person and your friend is 3 ft tall both of you are looking straight into the distance. The horizon will be the same for you both but your point of view will be different from your 3ft friend. Lets say you're a 5 ft person taking a picture of a 10 ft person and a 3ft person, in the photo the 10ft persons head will be above the horizon and the 3ft persons head will be below the horizon line - because - you are 5 ft.......the horizon for you is your eye level. Again the eye level and horizon are only talked about here as the same thing for the sake of simplicity but they're not the same thing.
Lets say you're looking up at something tall or looking down from a roof top, this is where 3 point perspective comes in.
@njones
2yr
Thanks so much for taking the time to give me such a detailed answer. Much appreciated.
2yr
Hey, @njones! This is a pretty tricky one, and I’m no perspective expert, but I’ll share with you my best guess.
@Jesper Axelsson gave you a really dedicated feedback and I, personally, find his hand-height-imagining method truly inspiring - but I suspect this photo might be one of these cases where the photographer would have ducked down to frame their subject. So my guess is that the eye level is actually somewhere close to what you drew. What leads me to believe so is that we can’t fully see neither the top nor the bottom of the deers’s torsos (which would mean the horizon cuts them across somewhere).
It might be hard to get it precisely though because, as you noticed, there are no obvious clues such as clearly converging lines (and even the deers’s feet on the ground, which could be a helpful hint, are covered by grass). But, to me, your guess seems like a good approximation anyway, and I think the boxes you drew over the image look convincing enough to reinforce that.
Best regards!
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2yr
Nice! The boxes look pretty accurate :) Maybe you should have the left box taper less to the front to include the whole torso.
- I don't think the horizon line should be placed that low. The horizon line should be placed at the eye level of the viewer. To find it I like to imagine that I'm in the world the image represents, and ask: "If I looked straight ahead (parallel with a level groundplane) where would my eyes go?". In this image that's a little below where the visible part of the sunlit sky starts.
That's how I usually do it, but you can also ask whether a specific object is above or below you. Objects below you are below the horizon line (since they are below your eye-level) and objects above you are above the horizon line (since they are above your eyes). If you find an object that seems to be straight in front of you, you know that that's the level where you draw the horizon line.
It can help to imagine touching the world you're seeing in the image. If I imagine touching the grass with my palm level, it feels like I would see the back of my hand --> it's below me --> it's below the horizon line. But if I touch the branches above the animals, with my hand level, I think I would see my palm --> it's above me --> it's above the horizon line.
You can let your hand sweep around the space your seeing until it finds a spot where you're no longer looking above or below it, but straight at it --> eye-level
You could also let it sweep across the ground plane, away into the distance, until you can "grab" the horizon line.
Another thing you could do is to imagine having your hand floating around, level, in the space of the image, then imagine hitting yourself with the side of your hand right at the level of your eyes. That will bring your imaginary hand up to were eye-level is.
To sum up:
All of these methods are about finding your (the viewer's) eye-level in the image. Try whatever gets you there fastest, or come up with your own approach.
It's good that you analyze, reflect and learn about this perspective business. But don't let it stress you if you feel that it's hard to grasp. As you gain more experience analyzing the forms of objects, perspective will become more and more natural to you. After having done a lot of robo beans and mannequins (later lessons in the course) I more and more started to "feel" the perspective.
Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
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