Project 0

Becoming Friends with Your Camera

Part 1: Selfie: The Wrong Way vs. The Right Way

This section includes five selfies that demonstrate different approaches to self-portrait photography.

Each image showcases unique techniques and perspectives. I prefer the fifth one. But the first three are funny (suitable for emoticons).

Part 1 showcases five key images that introduce the project concept. The first row displays three images showing the initial approach, while the second row presents two additional images highlighting the core methodology.

Part 2: Architectural Perspective Compression

The first image showcases a close-up shot using a short focal length (wide-angle lens), which creates a sense of depth and exaggerates perspective, making nearby objects appear larger while distant elements seem further away.

The second image employs a long focal length (telephoto lens) from a greater distance, compressing the perspective and bringing distant architectural elements closer together, creating a flatter, more compressed visual effect.

These contrasting approaches illustrate how lens choice fundamentally transforms our perception of architectural space and scale.

Part 2 demonstrates architectural perspective compression techniques through four key examples, showing how different camera angles and distances affect the perception of architectural elements.

Part 3: The Dolly Zoom

The dolly zoom, also known as the “Vertigo effect” or “Hitchcock zoom,” represents one of cinema’s most powerful and disorienting visual techniques. This section showcases this advanced camera movement where the camera physically moves forward or backward while simultaneously zooming in the opposite direction.

I took five different photos of my laptop using this technique. The result is a surreal effect where the subject remains the same size while the background perspective dramatically shifts, creating an unsettling sense of spatial distortion. As the camera pulls back while zooming in, the background compresses from an open, spacious view to a tunnel-like, compressed environment.

The Dolly Zoom effect in action - a cinematic technique that creates a disorienting perspective shift by simultaneously moving the camera forward while zooming out (or vice versa), keeping the subject the same size while dramatically changing the background perspective.