Assignment - Trajectory

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Course In Progress

Assignments 9Lesson NotesDownloads 5

Assignment - Trajectory

Lesson by

Marshall Vandruff

in The Perspective Course

Course In Progress

Assignments 9Lesson NotesDownloads 5

Now it's your turn to experiment. Go find something you like and photograph it from at least two different distances.

Get as close as you can while still fitting the entire subject in the frame. Use a wide-angle view.
Get as far away as you can and use a zoom or long lens to frame the subject similarly.

You can also take in-between shots. The goal is to see the contrast between the compressed space of the distant shot and the expanded space of the close-up.

This effect even works on flat objects. While a flat object shot face-on won't change much, the world around it will expand and compress dramatically. You'll notice that in the close-up view, vanishing points appear closer together, while in the distant view, they spread far apart.

Get out there and practice folding space with your camera. Good luck, and may all your trajectories be straight.

Deadline - submit by Nov 02, 2025 for a chance to be in the critique video!

Sita Rabeling

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19h

Am still studying it all. Thank you for explaining more about the tennis court!

Rachel Dawn Owens

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Wow! What great visuals!

Lucie VERGNON

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Hello Marshall! Here is my submission for the exercise. I photographed several subjects at my parents' house, taking a very wide shot and a telephoto shot for each one. My key observation concerns the portrait of my parents' dog. As you will see, the photo taken from very close with a wide-angle lens expands the space and makes her appear more slender, with her nose seeming further from her ears. In contrast, the version taken from far away with a long lens compresses the planes. Her snout and body appear closer together, which has the effect of making her look stockier and more massive. It's a perfect demonstration of how the lens "folds" space, even on a living subject. I also observed the described effect on the vanishing points for the angular objects: they move closer together in the wide-angle view and spread far apart in the telephoto view. Thank you for this stimulating course as always 🥰

Lin

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15h

Love these, shows the effects so clearly. Look how expanded the clock is too.

Carlos Javier Roo Soto

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I actually did the assignment before it was assign. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways. While I was walking I have the urge to take photos observing edges and proximity. Here's the proximity ones. After watching the assignment I'm sure I didn't do a great job but, oh well. The wheel weaves as the wheel wills, now is just trying again. And today I learned you can only upload up to 20 images per post.

M C

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but is my eye working the same as camera's lenses ? if so why don't we just use our eye? ok you could not share what you see directly with us, but why arent we more aware if this? after all, since started crawling on all four we have been "getting closer" to objects. why is this not obvious, like the fact that if we close our eyes we dont see anything? (yes I'm playing devil 's advocate here - but then perspective IS a dark art! gosh I'm so enjoying this course!

Anthony Hernandez

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I would say a few things contribute to this not being obvious to our eyes: 1. Zoom: We can't zoom in on far objects so we never see objects close to us without actually being close to the object. 2. Proximity: We tend to spend most time indoors so we don't observe things at very far distances. Most objects that we interact with are within arm's reach. 3. Stereoscopic vision: We focus on objects in front of us with stereoscopic vision which makes things that are in the background or in the distance out of focus and blurry, so we can't see both the object in focus and the background clearly at the same time (and vice versa - focusing on something in the distance puts close things out of focus).

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Understanding Perspective

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Marshall Vandruff

I Teach Creatives