Last night, some friends and I headed out to do some photography experimenting with an idea I had no too long ago. Unfortunately, I was inspired by last week’s temperatures, which looked like this-

Instead, we were met with bone-chilling winds, and the first place we scouted (under a 295 overpass, on the water – smart choice on my end) was just too damn cold and windy. 

Instead, we found a plain white wall in the Old Port, which was slightly more secluded from the wind, and (quickly) set up shop.

The basis of what I wanted to explore was how perspective change can transform a photograph into something else altogether. I instructed my friends to run at the wall and push off, while trying to treat the wall as “the floor”. This was a tall order in the bone chilling cold, wearing only sweatshirts, but they obliged.

I set up with one strobe with a grid attachment about 15 feet from the wall. The idea was to make the lighting resemble a single light bulb hanging from a ceiling, after the images were rotated. I quickly saw that the images I was capturing, when rotated, resembled some bizarre anti-gravity environment. Some of them also looked like skilled breakdancers  (which alas, my friends were not) captured mid-move. The perspective change was all that did it.

We saw this-

become THIS-

Another original image-

With a little tweaking (and a second attempt), looked like THIS-

The images seen below are some of my favorites, ending with the two finished pieces. Good, simple examples of how powerful perspective change can be.