Perspective foreshortening is caused by the way the human eye perceives the world due to its physical structure (for example, excitation of cone cells in the retina), and to the optical geometry of light rays (due to the nature of light itself).
As objects become more distant, they appear smaller because their visual angle decreases. The eye is at the vertex of a triangle with the object at its base, so the greater the distance of the object from the eye, the greater is the height of this triangle, and the less the visual angle (Euclidean geometry).
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| Canopied footway in perspective (© 2012 LightColourShade. All rights reserved) |
This was truly a wonderful little post. And you have made splendid points along the way. Interestingly, though, in my own photographic adventures, I have tried to deliberately (or otherwise) pick those shots in which perspective seems to play a minimal role. It was wonderful to see the alternative.
ReplyDeleteThanks. You're right, perspective is often avoided in photography because of distortion effects, but ever since my studies of architecture and painting (manually constructing perspectives for technical and artistic drawings) I've loved perspective, especially for a dramatic quality it gives the scene.
DeleteIt started with my fascination with Italian artists’, such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo or Tintoretto, mastery of incredibly complex dynamic perspectives, especially after I saw Tintoretto’s Miracle of St Mark Freeing the Slave for the first time.
One of my favorite renaissance paintings!
DeleteGreat minds think alike! ;)
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