Project 0:
Becoming Friends with Your Camera
Part 1: Selfie: The Wrong Way vs. The Right Way
Compared to the second selfie that looks natural, the close-up selfie shows a significant change in facial shape. This is due to lens distortion: when taking a close-up selfie, the image expands outward from the center to the edges, with the expansion becoming more significant closer to the edges, making the face appear more three-dimensional. In contrast, the second selfie makes the face look flatter.
Part 2: Architectural Perspective Compression
By comparing the two photos, we can see that the building in the first photo appears to be flatter, while the building in the second one has more depth. This is actually the same principle as in Part 1: when taking the first photo using a telephoto lens, the field of view narrows, compressing the distances between objects in the frame and making the photo appear flatter. The opposite effect occurs as well when the field of view is wider.
Part 3: The Dolly Zoom
Dolly zoom is a film-making technique in which the camera moves backward while the lens zooms in, keeping the subject the same size in the frame. In this way, the subject remains unchanged, but the perspective of the background shifts dramatically, creating a sense of spatial distortion for the viewer. Below is a series of photos I took using a stop sign on campus as the subject.
CS180-
project 0
Xiaoqi Wang