It’s all about point of view. Many snapshots you see have such a strong formula. The viewpoint is level with the ground in both front-to-back and left-to-right views and usually taken at eye-level above the ground.

In fact, your camera is a space-ship, capable of being in any number of positions and in any number of orientations.

Part I - Background

Firstly, we’ll look at the background and parallax. Because of the way the world of optics works, it’s possible to move a foreground object relative to its background by moving your point of view. Take the horizon, for example - if you hold a camera at eye-level and take a picture of someone the same height as you, the horizon cuts straight through their head, through the middle of their ears and behind their eyes (assuming flat terrain, of course). Likewise other elements of the background may confuse a shot somewhat - like a background signpost seemingly growing out of someone’s head.

Moving your viewpoint moves these background lines and can give a much better balance to the picture. This is before you even start to tilt the camera.

Part one of the challenge is to go out and take at least two pictures of the same subject. The subject should appear in the same position in each of the shots, but the background should move up and down. If possible, try not to tilt the camera. This can be achieved by using a wide-angle and cropping the picture to keep only the part containing the object. If you can’t avoid tilting, don’t worry about it, you’ll just notice that any verticals in the picture will lean towards each other.

Another thing you can do is google for pictures of people on beaches. See how much better the shots are when taken from higher or lower than the eye level of the subject, and how distracting it is when the horizon cuts straight through.

Part II - The Spaceship

Once you have a basic feel for the possibilities, you will now turn your camera into a spaceship. See how many different degrees of movement it can make. You can bank, tilt, turn, move, pitch, yaw. Take it out for a flight, make graceful loops, tilt left and do a steep banking turn, really put on an aerobatic display.

Now that your camera is free to move in all dimensions and doesn’t feel rigidly stuck into a single degree of movement you can take part 2 of the challenge. Take some more shots of your chosen subject. Fly in from above, sweep up from the ground while in a banked turn… think about how the object will look - coming from underneath, it will look large and imposing, if it appears diagonal in the shot it will look more dynamic, from above you may be able to isolate it from the background and remove the horizon altogether.

The only caveat with this sort of free movement is that you need to do it confidently. A small tilt on the horizon, for example, will look like an error. A bold tilt, whether it actually works or not, will look intended.

Unfortunately, this statue was too high up to get a good shot coming downwards towards it, and I’m not in the habit - like many photographers - of carrying a small flight case to both contain my gear and support my weight if I choose to stand on it for extra height. Good luck!