(If you want to watch the video go to The Slanted Lens on YouTube!)
If you think zooming your lens is changing the perspective you’re absolutely wrong. Zooming your lens is just cropping into the image. Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan here from The Slanted Lens. 
I’ve got Jenly with me. We’re going to look at what zooming is versus if you want to change the perspective, moving your feet. You have to move your feet to change the perspective. Zooming is just simply cropping in.
Let me show you exactly what I mean. So here’s just simply zooming in. Now it may change the focus. The focus is going to change a little bit because as I zoom in on a longer lens that shallower depth of field is going to start to build. So it will change the focus but it will not change the perspective. 
So I’m on the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8. We’re going to start with 35 mm and then just simply zoom in. And I’ll show you how that does not change the perspective.
All right, here’s 35mm. Now I’m going to go up to 50mm. Now I’m going to go to 70mm.
Now we’ll go up to 85mm. Now we’re going to go to 100mm, now to 135mm and to 150mm. 
Now if you take the 150mm and we put it side by side to the 35mm and we crop in on the 35mm the perspective is exactly the same. 
There’s the two side by side. So if you want to change the perspective you got to move your feet. 
And what does that do? Changing the perspective is a difference of the distance between me and the subject and keeping the head the same size. Then how that plays with the background. 
As I walk in, as I get closer and as I keep her head the same size in the frame, then the background is going to start to push away from me if I’m going from a long lens to a short lens. If I’m going from a short lens like 35mm up to 150mm then the background is going to slowly get closer to me and that’s going to change that perspective.
Here’s the light tip of the day. It’s noon, the sun is super high. I turned her so it’s a backlight and try to keep her nose down so I don’t get this sun light on her nose. And then we put a strobe in. I shot at 1/250th of a second at f/11 and did full power on the FJ400 and that gave me a beautiful kind of light on her face. And it darkened everything around us. Otherwise all of this brown out here would have just blown out. The path would have blown out. So that’s how we lit this thing. I made it very simple. Single light using the shutter to control the ambient and the aperture to also help control the ambient. Because we went to f/11 and the FJ400 gave us an exposure at f/11 which made it work really well. So there’s how we lit it.
I feel really blessed I get to work with some of the absolute finest humans on the planet. A firefighter, they have a heart and a spirit that is unlike any other human on this planet. So I feel really fortunate. I do travel a lot and I know some people may think that’s a negative. I get to meet people all over and I haven’t had a bad incident in 5 years. 
So this has been like a total blessing to my life. I’m inspired daily by the people that I get to work with and interact with. These guys destroy everything.
So you know, SKB is wonderful because, whether it’s tools for the trade or whether it’s their own personal hunting gear, it’s going to keep it safe. It’s going to keep it unbroken and used for many years to come.
So now I’m going to go backwards because it’s just easier to see. I’m going to start at 150mm and I’m going to move in closer to her and keep the head as close as I can to the same size in the frame as I go to a wider and wider lens. And watch what the background does. So here we are at 150mm. I’m going to move in to 135mm, going to move in to 100mm. Shoot a couple of those.
I go into 85mm, then to 70mm, 50mm and last of all 35mm. Look what that background has done. 
On a long lens it completely gives us a total background behind her. But as I get closer to her now that 35mm I’m looking way into the sky. If I’m smart I’ll take a knee with that 35mm and I’ll shoot down in here. Now I’ve got something interesting going on.
Practical application time. If I’m on a long lens it makes my background more simple because I’m able to blur out the background. And it becomes just one large wash on my person. 
If I’m on a wide lens I can get low and look up into the sky. And now I’ve got blue and that makes the background simple because it’s all one solid color. So if you want to simplify your background learn how to move your feet and change your perspective.
Because that’s going to give you the advantage to control that background and to make it into what you want. Now if my perspective is that I want to see this path like this is the long journey she has to make, then I’ll go to that wide lens and I’ll go up high and I’ll look down into that long journey she has to make.
If I want to get rid of the narrative completely, I don’t want to see this long path, I don’t want to talk about a long journey, I don’t want to see the contextual place we’re at. I don’t want to see the place. I don’t want to see any of that.
Then I go to that long lens and I reframe. And what’ll happen is all the brown out there will just simply become a beautiful kind of brown out of focus background. Even at f/11 it’s going to look pretty good.
So the narrative is gone at that point. It’s just about the background. It’s using that background just as a simple kind of beautiful canvas to present her on. So there’s the difference. You have to move your feet if you want to change the perspective. The perspective allows you to have control of the background. It allows you to have control of the narrative. You can see the whole world or you can get rid of the whole world depending on what you want to do. It helps you to get really kind of simple images. When I get down low I see into the sky. When I get that long lens I see and kind of blur out the background. So all those things are in your control if you move your feet and also if you get off from eye level. It kills me, people shoot everything at eye level, like somehow where I’m standing here is where I’m supposed to be. Get down here. Get up high. Change that perspective as far as eye level as well. That makes a huge difference in the image. So there’s a look at changing the perspective by moving your feet. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
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