Have you ever seen those photos of the Leaning Tower of Pisa where it looks like someone is holding it up with their hands? That’s forced perspective in action—a photography technique that plays with size and distance to create illusions.
At its core, forced perspective is all about manipulating what the camera sees by carefully positioning your subjects. It’s a technique commonly used in photography, drawing, and filmmaking, and when you get the hang of it, you can create some really interesting and unique images.
What Happens When You Combine Forced Perspective with Set Design?
When you add set design into the mix, things get even more interesting. You can exaggerate forced perspective to create surreal, visually striking photos. Instead of just playing with angles and distances, you get to design and build the set to enhance that illusion, giving you even more control over your shots.
David and I have been experimenting with forced perspective for years, building sets that exaggerate depth and scale. It's definitely a bit of an art form, but it’s also a lot of fun once you start learning the ropes.
What’s cool about forced perspective is that when you combine it with photography and set design, you can push the effect even further. You start by designing the set to play with perspective, and then you can manipulate things like lighting, posing, camera placement, and lens choice to exaggerate it even more.
Introducing Our Forced Perspective Photography Course
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to use forced perspective in your photos, our new Forced Perspective Photography Course is for you. In this course, we break down everything, showing you how to bring forced perspective into your own work.
We’ll take you through how to create a forced perspective dining scene from start to finish.
Here's what we'll cover:
Building Your Forced Perspective Table: David will show you two different ways to build your own table with minimal tools.
Set Design: We’ll walk you through the process of designing and assembling your set to make the most of forced perspective.
Lighting the Scene: Learn how to light your set in a way that enhances the illusion of perspective.
Directing the Shoot: We’ll share how we direct the shoot to get the most out of the set and make sure everything fits together.
Editing: We’ll show you how we edit the photos to bring out the best of the forced perspective.
Whether you’re just starting to get into set design or you’re looking for ways to add more creativity to your photos, this course will give you the tools to take things further. If you’ve ever wanted to make photos that feel a little more imaginative and unique, this is a great way to get started with forced perspective.
