Foreshortening and Perspective

To understand what foreshortening and perspective is, its important to know what their definitions are to then apply this to photographic practice in order to understand what is meant when someone says "Take this image from another perspective".

Definition of Foreshortening

Foreshortening is the act of portraying or showing an object or certain view as if it is closer than it actually is or as having less depth/distance.

In this example we can see that the foot looking like its about to tread onto the camera looks as if its extremely close but in actuality its not as close as you may think, foreshortening has been used here to create this exceptional piece.

Definition of Perspective

Perspective is the representation of three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface which in turns give the correct impression of their height, width, depth and position in relation to each other.

My example for perspective features two men supposedly pushing a large bottle. This looks as if its the case but real scenario is that the bottle is simply closer to the camera whilst the two people walk off further back into the distance and imitate pushing the bottle to create this nice look and trick.

Perspective is also basically the same as angles, taking a picture from a different angle helps see the bigger picture of things as well as revealing hidden secrets you may have not seen otherwise. I'm going to bring up another example of how something from one angle, or perspective, can look completely different and out of place in a different perspective.

Example -

As you can see, in the first image you see The Taj Mahal, which looks nice and very rich, wealthy, taken from straight on of the front of the building. But in the second picture you see the real side of things. Outside of The Taj Mahal and all its beauty which surrounds it, the story is a lot different. Rubbish is littered everywhere in a place which looks inhabitable and nasty.

I found this comparison image on a certain website, and on this website it had a lot more of these famous locations taken in different angle and perspectives which i found quite enjoyable to look at. The link to the site can be found here:
http://themetapicture.com/famous-photos-from-a-different-angle/