What is Aerial Perspective
-
Only on rare, crisp, winter days is the
atmosphere absolutely clear. When the weather's right, though, you'd
swear you could reach out and grab that mountain peak twenty miles
away. This un- canny sensation of reduced distance on clear days makes
you realize how hazy the atmosphere is the rest of the time. This
familiar phenomenon of tones diminishing in intensity the further they
are from the viewer is known as aerial perspective. It comes about as a
result of the change of temperature between the warm earth and the cold
air and is best seen early in the morning. In photographs, you'll
notice it more when you fit a telephoto lens to the camera; the lens
magnifies a small portion of the distant scene, so the haze is more
prominent.
-
You may have observed that brilliant
scarlet subjects sometimes seem to jump out of a picture, so that they
almost hover above the surface of the print. This is really just
another manifestation of aerial perspective: warm colors such as red,
orange and yellow are the first to be absorbed by the atmosphere, so we
associate them with things close by. Cool colored subjects - blues and
greens - appear to recede from the viewer. When you want to suggest
depth you can use this effect to advantage by composing pictures with
warm hues in the foreground, and cooler colors behind.
|