Behind the Digital LensMusings of an Amateur Photographer

28th Oct, 2010 The View from a Shoe

We have a small dog.  Well, relatively small, anyway.  She’s a Yorkie, but I would not call her a “teacup” Yorkie, or even a toy Yorkie.  She’s just small.  Bailey stands not quite 6″ tall at the shoulder.  When she hasn’t had a haircut in a while, she would remind you of an Ewok.  We once took her to a Texas Bluebonnet festival, carrying her in a pouch, and one of the vendors even said, “Look!  It’s an ewok!”

Bailey is cute, sweet and adorable; the kind of dog you would love to follow around with a camera and take a ton of photos of.  The only problem is, Bailey sees a camera and looks the other direction or turns away from the camera completely.  Matters not if you move, too, to try to see her face, she will turn yet again.  You don’t even have to have the camera up to your face, as long as she sees it in your hand, regardless of what the camera looks like [she just knows a camera by instinct] she is going to make sure you don’t get a photo of her, especially if she has to look up.  Hey, it’s a LONG way to look up from her height.

One day, however, I decided I wanted to take some photos of her face, so out into the back yard we went, just us two.  At first I sat down in the grass, but I didn’t like the angle, so I got down on my stomach and, amazingly, got a lot of good photos of Bailey’s face in both color and black and white without her looking away or moving.

Not long afterward my wife and I took a trip to the original Dr. Pepper Bottling Plant in Stephenville, Texas.  Talk about a neat place to visit!  Leading in to their museum on the second floor is this gorgeous wood flooring, which is unfortunately not very level, but had a nice gloss finish on it.  I stood looking at that and then put my camera on the floor and set the timer.  As far as I was concerned, it was a terrific photo, and from a viewpoint that most don’t think about.  Thus, my “shoe view” photo was born.

Photos from foot level.  I don’t take photos from this angle very often, but it is a view that is often over looked.  I don’t mean photos that are taken from bending over and pressing the shutter button, but photos literally from ground level where you put the camera on the ground.  Depending on the digital camera make, however, you may or may not be able to look through the view finder or the view screen to see what you’re taking a photo of, which is somewhat the beauty of shoe views.  You never know exactly what you might catch in the shot.

So, remember, if you have little dogs, crawling babies, or just want to experiment, don’t forget the view from your shoe.

Shoe View Pumpkins

In Honor Lies Victory