Evoke Depth with Vanishing Point Perspective; Plus Seven Other Techniques

By Tanya Riseman

Presented at Silver Spring Camera Club’s Photo Forum, December 2023

Evoking the sense of depth and volume in two dimensional images is one of the important aspects of successful photography. Constructing or highlighting one, two or three point perspective is very helpful. Other techniques include overlapping objects, diminishing object perspective, the use of light and shadow, atmospheric perspective, and the contrast of warm and cool colors. We also speculate on how our physiology and evolution is the bed-stone of some of these effects.

That was a very academic sounding abstract. Come, let’s explore how depth can be conveyed in our images in practice.

Long ago, people created images where size was often used to show the relative rank and importance of people and things, but not so much accurately documenting physical space in scenes. Starting in the Renaissance, people developed and refined what we call one and two point perspective, which are heavily used even today, With the dawn of photography, three point perspective was figured out. See more in the first part of this slide presentation:

Part 1 One, two and three point perspective. How well do you think perspective provides a sense of depth and volume? I speculate on why two point perspective is more popular than three point. Perspective can be used to think about things beyond buildings, such as the use of angles and diagonals to energize images and to “shoe-box” objects and even animals.

Part 2 A brief introduction to seven additional techniques for evoking depth and volume.

• Overlapping objects
• Diminishing scale perspective
• Shadows/light angle
• Put in a person (landscapes).
• Depth of field
• Atmospheric perspective (landscapes)
• Warmer/cooler colors

Again, check out both parts of this slide presentation, as PDFs: Part 1 and Part 2