Monkey View

You are probably wondering why this post is titled "Monkey View" and how it is even related to photography. I titled this post "Monkey View" because monkeys see the world upside-down most of the time since they are always hanging upside-down, and this is related to my blog post because I will be talking about the technique from Elsie and Emmas book, A Beautiful Mess: Photo Idea Book, of taking photographs upside-down.

This technique of taking photographs upside-down might have been the hardest one for me because my mind was just not used to looking at photographs upside-down. In their book, Elsie and Emma says, "Turning images upside down forces us to look at them in a whole new way" (158). This is the reason why taking upside-down photographs is so hard for me, because I am forced to look at something in a different way that my brain is not used to. When looking at photographs upside-down we also see the imperfections of the photograph: imbalance (158).

To create an upside-down photograph is very simple: you can either turn your phone/camera upside-down and take the photograph or you can use a photo-editing software to rotate the photo (158). When using your phone to take an upside-down photo make sure your screen is locked. If the screen is not locked then the screen will rotate as you rotate your phone, and the photograph will be like any other photo.

After taking several upside-down photos and reading A Beautiful Mess: Photo Idea Book, I realized there are many pros and cons about this technique. One con to taking photographs upside-down is it ruins a photograph - we thought the photo was perfect (before rotating it) but after rotating the photo and looking at it, it creates an uneasy feeling inside us because our brain is not used to looking at things upside-down, and this feeling makes us believe/think the photo is no longer as perfect as we thought before and we delete the photo. However, a pro to this technique is it creates variety in your photography collection, and it lets us see the imbalance in a photograph (158-159).

What I took away from this technique of taking photographs upside-down is even though this technique is hard to wrap my mind around and to get used to I am not going to stop taking upside-down photos even if I really want to, because they really do create a variety in my work and they stand out against my other photographs.

A question for all you bloggers is what is your favorite angle/perspective to take photos?

Citations:

Chapman, Emma, and Elsie Larson. A Beautiful Mess: Photo Idea Book. New York: Amphoto, 2013. Print