Why Perspective Matters

Perspective is the way you see something.  If you take a photo of a room with a wide perspective (using a wide angle lens) the room appears very large.  Let’s say you’re a real estate agent and you want all the rooms in the house you are selling to look really big.  It’s no problem for any competent photographer to do this.  But do you really want to do it? Sure, it may get a lot of people to look at the property but when they get there they’ll see that they have been duped and unlikely to purchase the property.  It’s sort of like the $10 cell plan you see advertised.  When you go down to the store to sign up you’re told the plan doesn’t include any minutes – not a very good way to conduct business.

The better solution is use a lens that more closely matches the perspective your eye sees in person.  This way the buyer sees pretty much what he saw in the photos.

Take a look at the following two photos:

Very wide perspective photo

Carnevale Gallery - Forum Shops - Caesars Palace
Normal perspective photo 

Both photos are of the same room although the top photo makes the room look very large. The bottom photo very closely matches what your eye sees.