Using Point of View and Perspective in your compositions:

Understanding the Core Concepts

Before we can masterfully combine point of view and perspective, we must first understand them as distinct yet deeply connected tools in the creative arsenal. Think of them as the heart and the skeleton of your composition; one provides the emotional core, while the other gives it structure and form. Getting a firm grasp on each concept individually is the first step toward making them work together seamlessly. This is a key part of improving your craft in photography.

Defining Point of View (POV)

Point of View, often abbreviated as POV, is the “camera lens” or the “narrator’s eyes” through which your audience experiences the work. It’s not just a physical position in space; it’s the emotional and psychological standpoint from which the scene, story, or subject is presented. POV answers the question: “Whose story is this, and how do they feel about what they are seeing?”

This is the lens of emotion. A scene depicted from the POV of a triumphant hero will feel vastly different from the same scene shown from the POV of a defeated villain. It dictates what the audience knows, what they see, and, most importantly, how they are meant to feel. It’s crucial to distinguish a character’s POV from your own as the creator. Your personal feelings should be set aside to authentically inhabit the viewpoint you’ve chosen for the narrative, whether it’s a character, an impartial observer, or the audience themselves. Learning about inspiration and continuous learning in photography can help you explore different POVs.

Defining Perspective

If POV is the emotional standpoint, perspective is the technical method used to render that standpoint believably in a visual medium. It is the art and science of representing three-dimensional objects and spatial relationships on a two-dimensional surface, like a canvas, a photograph, or a screen. Perspective is what creates the illusion of depth, distance, and scale. Understanding depth and layering is fundamental to perspective.

This technical framework governs the relative size, position, and form of all elements within your composition. It dictates that objects farther away should appear smaller, and that parallel lines, like the sides of a road, seem to converge at a distant point on the horizon. Without a solid understanding of perspective, a composition can feel flat, distorted, or confusing, breaking the illusion you are trying to create. Exploring advanced compositional techniques, such as the rule of thirds or leading lines, can significantly enhance your use of perspective.

How POV and Perspective Intersect

The true magic happens when these two concepts work in harmony. The simplest way to think of their relationship is: Point of View is the why; Perspective is the how.

Your POV is the narrative choice—the story you want to tell. Your perspective is the set of technical rules you use to tell that story visually. For example, if your chosen POV is that of a small child looking up at a towering adult, your narrative goal (the why) is to make the child feel small and the adult seem intimidating. To achieve this, you employ the techniques of perspective (the how): you draw or photograph the scene from a low angle, causing the vertical lines of the adult’s figure to stretch and loom over the viewer. This is similar to how one might experiment with angles and perspectives in mobile photography.

A masterful example of this synergy can be found in Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining. The recurring shots of Danny riding his tricycle through the Overlook Hotel’s empty hallways are iconic. The Point of View is low to the ground, matching Danny’s height and immersing us in his child-like vulnerability. Kubrick then uses meticulous one-point Perspective, with the hallway’s lines converging deep in the frame. This combination makes the space feel both infinitely long and terrifyingly claustrophobic, perfectly marrying the character’s emotional state (POV) with the technical construction of the scene (Perspective). Mastering these elements contributes to the overall framing and timing of your shots.

Mastering Point of View in Your Work

Once you understand the fundamental difference between the emotional “why” (POV) and the technical “how” (perspective), you can begin to wield them as powerful creative tools. Whether you’re a writer, painter, or filmmaker, your choice of POV is the first and most crucial decision in shaping your audience’s experience. It determines whose story is being told, how it feels, and what the viewer is meant to understand about the world you’ve created.

Literary Point of View: The Narrator’s Voice

In writing, point of view dictates the voice and filter through which the story is told. Each choice offers a unique set of strengths and limitations, fundamentally altering the reader’s relationship with the characters and events.

• First-Person (I, me): This POV puts the reader directly inside a character’s head. It creates a powerful sense of intimacy and immediacy, as we experience events through their personal thoughts, feelings, and biases. This closeness also opens the door for the unreliable narrator, a character whose perception of reality may be skewed, forcing the reader to question the truth of what they’re being told.
• Second-Person (You): A less common but highly effective choice, the second-person POV addresses the reader directly. By using “you,” the author casts the reader as a character in the story, creating an immersive and often interactive experience. It’s frequently used in advertising (“You deserve the best!”), instructional guides, and interactive fiction.
• Third-Person Limited (He/She/They): This popular narrative style follows a single character closely, almost as if a camera were perched on their shoulder. The reader is privy to this one character’s thoughts and feelings, but no one else’s. This builds empathy for the viewpoint character and creates natural suspense, as the reader can only know what the character knows.
• Third-Person Omniscient (He/She/They): The all-knowing narrator. This POV allows the storyteller to move freely between characters, locations, and timelines. The narrator can reveal the inner worlds of any character, provide historical context, and comment on the action from a god-like vantage point. It provides a broad, comprehensive view of the story’s universe.

Visual Point of View: The Viewer’s Position

In visual arts like photography, painting, and film, point of view refers to the literal position from which the audience views the scene. Changing this angle by just a few feet can dramatically alter the meaning and emotional impact of an image. Understanding how to manipulate perspective is key to improving your craft. Consider how different viewpoints can affect the perceived size and importance of your subjects, much like how the rule of thirds guides the viewer’s eye.

• Eye-Level View: This is the most neutral and common viewpoint. By placing the camera or viewer at the same height as the subject’s eyes, the artist creates a sense of equality and direct connection. It’s a relatable perspective that makes the viewer feel like they are present in the scene, engaging with the subject on equal terms.
• High-Angle View (Bird’s-Eye): When we look down on a subject from above, it tends to diminish their importance and make them appear small, vulnerable, or trapped. A high-angle shot can also serve a practical purpose, giving the audience a wide overview of a landscape or the layout of a room, establishing a sense of scale and place. This can be particularly useful when considering how to avoid boring landscape photos.
• Low-Angle View (Worm’s-Eye): Looking up at a subject from a low vantage point has the opposite effect. It makes the subject seem powerful, dominant, heroic, or even intimidating. This angle exaggerates height and stature, giving the subject control over the frame and the viewer. It’s the classic “hero shot” for a reason.
• Subjective POV (First-Person Shot): This technique places the viewer directly into the character’s shoes, allowing them to see the world through their eyes. It is the most immersive visual POV, often used in video games and found-footage films to create a visceral, immediate experience of the action as it unfolds. This is similar to how experimenting with angles and perspectives in mobile photography can enhance a composition.

The Technical Craft of Perspective

If Point of View is the heart of your composition, perspective is the skeleton. It’s the technical framework that gives your two-dimensional creation the convincing illusion of three-dimensional space. Mastering these rules allows you to build worlds that feel real, deep, and immersive, giving your chosen POV a tangible space to inhabit.

Linear Perspective: Creating Depth with Lines

Pioneered during the Renaissance, linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating realistic depictions of depth. It relies on the principle that parallel lines appear to converge at a distant point on the horizon line. This is the most fundamental tool for constructing believable spaces, from simple rooms to complex cityscapes. Understanding how to implement this can be a key part of advanced compositional techniques.

One-Point Perspective

This is the simplest form of linear perspective, using a single vanishing point on the horizon line. All parallel lines that are perpendicular to the viewer’s line of sight (orthogonals) recede directly towards this single point. It’s the perfect technique for compositions that look straight down a long, straight path, such as a road, a hallway, or a set of railway tracks disappearing into the distance.

Two-Point Perspective

When you view an object from an angle, like the corner of a building, you need two-point perspective. This method uses two vanishing points, both located on the horizon line. The vertical lines of the object remain straight, but the parallel horizontal lines (like the top and bottom edges of the walls) recede towards one of the two vanishing points. This adds a greater sense of dynamism and realism to objects that are not facing the viewer head-on.

Three-Point Perspective

To create truly dramatic high-angle or low-angle views, we introduce a third vanishing point. This point is placed either far above the horizon line (for a bird’s-eye view, looking down) or far below it (for a worm’s-eye view, looking up). In this system, not only do the horizontal lines converge, but the vertical lines also recede toward this third point. This is the technique used to make skyscrapers look impossibly tall or to give a sense of vertigo when looking down from a great height.

Atmospheric (or Aerial) Perspective

While linear perspective uses lines to create depth, atmospheric perspective uses value, color, and detail. This technique simulates the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere on our perception of distant objects. The vast amount of air particles (dust, moisture, pollutants) between a viewer and a faraway object scatters light, affecting how we see it. Mastering this is crucial for avoiding boring landscape photos.

To create a convincing illusion of atmospheric perspective, artists follow a few key principles:

• Value: Objects in the distance appear lighter and have less contrast than objects in the foreground.
• Detail: The further away an element is, the less detail and texture will be visible.
• Color: Distant objects often appear cooler in color, shifting towards blues and grays, as shorter blue light waves are scattered more easily by the atmosphere.

This is an essential technique for creating a sense of immense scale and depth, particularly in landscape painting and photography.

Other Key Perspective Techniques

Beyond the foundational systems of linear and atmospheric perspective, artists employ other creative methods to guide the eye and manipulate the viewer’s sense of space. Exploring these can be a great way of improving your photography craft.

Forced Perspective

Forced perspective is a delightful optical illusion that plays with our assumptions about scale. By placing objects at different distances from the camera and composing them carefully, you can make them appear larger, smaller, closer, or farther away than they really are. This is the trick behind tourist photos of people “holding up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa and was used extensively in films like The Lord of the Rings to make hobbits appear much smaller than humans and wizards.

S-Curve Perspective

The S-Curve is a powerful compositional tool that uses a winding line to lead the viewer’s eye through the frame. A meandering river, a winding road, or a curving coastline creates a natural and graceful path for the eye to follow, drawing the viewer deeper into the scene. This not only enhances the sense of depth but also adds a dynamic, flowing rhythm to the composition that is more organic than the rigid lines of linear perspective. This is a great example of how using leading lines can improve your compositions.

Combining POV and Perspective for Maximum Impact

Understanding Point of View and Perspective as separate concepts is the first step. The true artistry, however, lies in weaving them together. When the emotional intent of your POV is supported by the technical execution of perspective, you can guide your audience’s feelings with incredible precision. Let’s explore how this synergy works through a few practical case studies.

Case Study: Creating Awe and Power

To make a subject feel dominant, monumental, or heroic, you must make the audience feel small in comparison. This is a classic combination of a powerful POV and dramatic perspective.

• Point of View: A low-angle view is the natural choice. By placing the “camera” or the viewer’s eyes at the subject’s feet and looking up, you immediately establish a hierarchy of power. This “worm’s-eye” POV taps into a primal understanding of size and importance.
• Perspective: This POV is technically achieved using three-point perspective. The strong vertical lines converge towards a third vanishing point high above the frame, exaggerating the subject’s height and making it appear to tower over the viewer. This technique stretches the form, making it loom in a dynamic and imposing way.
• Common Applications: This method is a staple in comic books for depicting superheroes, in films for showcasing giant monsters or towering mechs, and in architecture photography to capture the majesty of skyscrapers and cathedrals.

Case Study: Evoking Intimacy and Empathy

To forge a direct, personal connection between the audience and a character, you need to eliminate distance and distraction. The goal is to make the viewer feel like they are in the room with the subject, sharing a private moment.

• Point of View: An eye-level view is the most effective tool for creating a sense of equality and relatability. It mimics a natural, face-to-face conversation, inviting the audience to connect with the subject on a human level. A slightly subjective POV, where we see the world just over a character’s shoulder, can achieve a similar effect.
• Perspective: While linear perspective might be simple, the key here is often controlling the depth of field. In photography and cinematography, using a shallow depth of field throws the background out of focus. This visual technique isolates the subject, forcing the viewer’s attention onto their facial expressions, the light in their eyes, and the subtle cues of their emotional state. In writing, this is akin to focusing solely on a character’s internal thoughts and immediate sensory details, blurring out the wider world.
• Common Applications: This is the foundation of compelling portraiture in painting and photography. In film, it’s used for emotionally charged close-ups. In literature, it’s the essence of a third-person limited POV that draws the reader deep into a character’s psyche.

Case Study: Conveying Isolation or Detachment

Sometimes the story requires you to emphasize a character’s loneliness or the vast, impersonal nature of their environment. Here, you want to create a sense of emotional and physical distance between the viewer and the subject.

• Point of View: A high-angle, distant view is perfect for this. Looking down on a subject from above can make them appear vulnerable, small, and lost in their surroundings. It positions the viewer as a detached observer, watching from a safe, removed position.
• Perspective: This sense of distance is powerfully reinforced by atmospheric perspective. By making elements in the background lighter, less detailed, and bluer in tone, you create a convincing illusion of a vast, empty space separating the viewer from the subject. This visual gulf enhances the feeling of isolation.
• Common Applications: This technique is masterfully used in landscape painting and film to show a lone figure against an epic backdrop. It’s also central to the work of artists who explore themes of urban loneliness. A quintessential example is Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” The viewer is placed outside the diner, looking in from a slightly elevated and detached POV. The dark, empty street creates a void, and we are separated from the patrons by a large pane of glass, making us silent observers of their quiet, disconnected existence.

Practical Exercises to Hone Your Skills

Theory is essential, but practice is where mastery is forged. Understanding the concepts of point of view and perspective is one thing; internalizing them so they become a natural part of your creative process is another. These targeted exercises are designed to help you actively apply these principles, strengthening your creative instincts and technical abilities.

For Visual Artists (Photographers, Painters, Illustrators)

Visual storytelling relies on the immediate impact of the frame. These drills will help you become more deliberate in how you position the viewer and construct your world.

• The “Three Angles” Challenge: Choose a single, simple subject—it could be a person, a chair, or even a piece of fruit on a table. Your mission is to capture this same subject from three distinct points of view: a low-angle (worm’s-eye) view, a direct eye-level view, and a high-angle (bird’s-eye) view. Once you have your three images, compare them side-by-side. Don’t just look at the compositional differences; analyze the emotional shift. How does the low angle empower your subject, making it seem dominant or heroic? How does the neutral eye-level shot create a sense of direct connection? What feeling of vulnerability or observation does the high angle introduce? This exercise is a powerful lesson in how camera placement dictates narrative.
• Vanishing Point Hunt: This exercise turns a simple walk into a technical field study. Head outside with a camera or sketchbook and actively search for real-world examples of linear perspective. Look for a long, straight road or railway line converging at a single vanishing point on the horizon—that’s one-point perspective. Next, find the corner of a building and observe how its two visible sides recede towards two separate vanishing points. This is two-point perspective in action. By identifying and sketching or photographing these structures, you train your eye to see the underlying geometric grid that gives our three-dimensional world its depth.

For Writers

For writers, POV and perspective shape the reader’s entire experience of the story, from their emotional connection to the characters to their understanding of the world itself.

• The “Perspective Swap” Exercise: Take a short scene from a story you’re working on, ideally one with at least two characters. Now, rewrite that exact scene from the point of view of the other character. The goal isn’t just to change the pronouns from “he” to “I.” You must fully inhabit the new narrator’s mind. What do they notice that the original character missed? How do their personal biases, fears, and desires color their interpretation of the events? A simple conversation can transform from an innocent chat into a tense interrogation depending on whose head the reader is in. This drill builds empathy and reveals the hidden complexities in your narrative.
• The “Sensory Scale” Drill: This exercise is a workout in descriptive detail and the power of physical perspective. First, imagine a standard kitchen and write a paragraph describing it from the point of view of a tiny mouse. Focus on the sensory details from that level. The gaps under the cabinets are cavernous tunnels, a fallen crumb is a feast, and the hum of the refrigerator is a deafening drone. Then, rewrite the scene, describing the very same kitchen from the point of view of a towering giant who must duck to fit through the door. To them, the counters are uncomfortably low, the faucet is a tiny spout, and the entire room feels like a doll’s house. This exercise brilliantly illustrates how a character’s physical relationship to their environment fundamentally changes how they—and the reader—perceive it.

Breaking the Rules: Advanced and Unconventional Approaches

Once you understand the fundamental rules of point of view and perspective, you gain the power to break them with intention. The most memorable works often defy convention, using unconventional approaches to challenge the audience, evoke powerful emotions, and create a lasting impact. Moving beyond the traditional framework allows you to craft truly unique and thought-provoking compositions.

Using Unreliable Narrators and Skewed POVs

In literature and film, the relationship between the audience and the narrator is built on a foundation of trust. An unreliable narrator deliberately shatters that trust. This is a storyteller whose credibility has been seriously compromised, whether through bias, delusion, naivety, or outright deception. We are forced to see the world through a warped lens, questioning every statement and event.

This powerful literary device does more than just tell a story; it actively engages the audience in a game of interpretation. By presenting a skewed version of events, the creator builds immense suspense and mystery. The reader or viewer becomes a detective, sifting through the narrator’s account to find clues to the objective truth. This creates a deeply immersive and psychological experience, forcing us to consider the nature of memory, perception, and truth itself.

Weaving Multiple Points of View

Why tell a story from one perspective when you can tell it from many? Weaving multiple points of view is a technique that presents a single narrative through the eyes of several different characters. Instead of a linear, singular experience, the story becomes a complex tapestry of overlapping, and often conflicting, accounts. This polyphonic approach provides a richer, more nuanced understanding of the events and the characters involved.

Iconic works like Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon demonstrate this effect perfectly, where a single crime is recounted in four contradictory ways, leaving the audience to ponder what truly happened. Similarly, William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying shifts its narrative voice between fifteen characters, creating a dizzying and profound mosaic of human consciousness. This method highlights the subjectivity of experience and builds a world that feels more complete and multifaceted.

Distorting Perspective for Artistic Effect

In the visual arts, strict adherence to realistic perspective is just one option among many. Artists have long understood that distorting or abandoning the rules of perspective can be a powerful tool for expressing emotion, chaos, and abstract ideas that realism cannot capture. By bending the lines, flattening the space, or exaggerating scale, an artist can communicate an internal, psychological reality rather than a purely external one.

Entire art movements were founded on this principle. Cubism, pioneered by artists like Pablo Picasso, rejected a single viewpoint, instead depicting subjects from multiple angles at once to represent a more complete concept of the form. Expressionism used jarring colors and distorted figures to convey raw, internal emotion. And Surrealism, as mastered by Salvador Dalí, often employed hyper-realistic perspective to render bizarre, dreamlike scenes, making the impossible feel unnervingly plausible.