I found an article on my travels across "web-land" which I thought was well worth sharing. However, although I duly credited the author and gave a link to the website from whence it came, I have received a fairly curt email asking me to remove it, because I didn't ask first! So I have removed her words and her photographs and written my own! I would have thought that the Author would be appreciative of the publicity, but sadly this was not the case.

The article was about getting "down low" with your camera and taking photographs from a different perspective. I often get down on the floor for photos of my dogs, and so the article was not news to me, but I thought I would share it. (So here is my version instead!)

Of course a low level perspective is good for all sorts of photos, just getting on the floor (or at least crouching down! - mind the knees!) and pointing your camera "up" a subject can give a whole new slant on quite ordinary things.

It also lets you see things you would not otherwise see - just remember the time you had to sit on the floor in the kitchen for some reason and you looked at the bottom of your kitchen cupboards and noticed the underside of your wall cupboards... or is that just me?! lol

Anyway, if you want to scrapbook a page about something for which you have no "new photos" for instance, then take your camera and take the shot from near the floor area.

Try taking pictures from low level of your children, pets, garden, house, and these shots are good for scrapbooking everyday subjects. For the picture above I quietly got down on the floor and laid on my tummy, placing the camera on the floor. I did just tip it up very slightly to get the dogs head completely in shot. And I used the subsequent carpet area as a good light background for my title which I placed over the photograph before printing it. (Using this technique)

I know a lot of scrappers take part in classes and challenges which can often have, what would be considered, mundane subject matter... such as "A typical day in my life" or "my home". If you take all the shots from your eye level (sometimes called the default view, or standard perspective) it gets a bit boring.... change the angle, et voila!

As you can see from the photo of this layout (left) I crouched down to take a picture of the front wing of my car and it ended up being the most powerful of all the shots and therefore became the focal photo with the "normal" pictures as small backup photos only.

It's a fairly natural thing to get down low when taking pictures of smaller animals, it is for me anyway as I have mentioned earlier, and you will see from the next photo, I was in amoungst the grass for that one - well with a small Jack Russell it's a case of getting down to her level!

A little tip... try taking "upward facing" shots at gatherings, such as weddings for some "unusual" photos!

So when you are next scratching your head for something a bit different, get your camera and "get down and groovy" as they say!