The Importance of Scale in Photography

Composition  •  Photography Tips

In the Oxford Dictionary Scale is defined as ‘Relative or Proportionate Dimensions’. So, what has this got to do with our photography?

Think about the last time you took a wonderful view and, actually, felt a bit disappointed with the end result when you got back home. What did I miss?

The key, as photographers, is that we need to find a method that really highlights the actual scale of the subject in our image.

Lets begin with something dramatic – the Aloysha statute in Murmansk, Russia. It is enormous – looks big in this image but ‘How Big?’.

We need some reference so that we can judge size – the obvious answer is people.

Now we can really get a feel of the true size of this statue.

We all instinctively know the average size of people and our brains automatically put this into perspective so that we can appreciate size in the image. So in many case the key is to include people. Here are a few examples.

A fascinating image taken in Dry Island Buffalo Jump State Park in Canada – but how big is it? Adding a person works wonders…

It is particularly important when we have images of beautiful vistas such as in the Rockies.

A beautiful view but the viewer doesn’t really feel the size – adding a person changes the whole feel of the image.

We are not just talking about using people to give a sense of scale – it can be any object which people will immediately identify and have an understanding of its size and therefore a better grasp of the relative size or scale of the main image. In this case the size of the cat!

Even the distant glimpse of motor cars travelling up a far hill works as a scale indicator

The next example uses the estimated size of the tour boat to give the scale. Viewers will have seen many of these sailing to and from and so will have an estimate of size to help judge the size of the falls.

A different example is the size of the red coated soldier in the sentry box which serves as the scale measure for the very large castle.

Again the use of people crossing the suspension bridge gives the viewer the scale of the image.

In the next example, even a swimmer can work as a scale indicator as well as providing and important compositional effect.

There are many examples of the crucial effect of scale and it is important that we remain aware of the added impact we can give to our images when we think of Scale.

As a final example here is an image of a glacier – the tiny specks around the centre of the glacier are a tour party! Without them the viewer would have no concept about the immense size of the glacier!

Enjoy Your Photography!

About the Author:
Roger Alan Lee from phonecamera.co.uk is a passionate photographer – he is also a Johannesburg based photographic trainer and cruise ship speaker on Photography. He runs a one day ‘Really Enjoy Your Camera’ course and serves eBooks and videos ‘for people who don’t want to drown in detail but just want to take good images.’