Positioning the Horizon

Before doing this exercise, my only thoughts on positioning the horizon were to consider whether you wanted to show more land or more sky. On days such as the one shown here, I might have included more sky in the shot than on days where it held less interest. For me in this set, the clouds hold as much interest as the corn so for now; the level of interest can be ignored in search of other effects.

Starting with the horizon very low in shot 1, the result is that of a shallow and very wide looking field with the sky above appearing less wide, yet showing much more depth. In shot 2 with the horizon slightly higher, the extra depth to the field makes it look less wide than in the previous shot, whereas the sky now looks wider.

I find the third shot the most interesting. As a result of the horizon being along the centre of the shot, both the width and depth of the land and sky are equal. The effect of this balance is that the eye is drawn to the horizon and in this particular set; I feel that more depth is created in the picture as a whole.

As we move through the subsequent shots, the higher the horizon gets, the deeper and narrower the field looks and the wider and shallower the sky looks.

Although the height of the horizon has a significant effect on the depth of different elements of the shot, there is another contributing factor: in the latter shots, more foreground interest is shown, drawing the eye to the front of the scene. I have noticed that the cottage in shot 6 looks bigger and closer than in shot 1. Logically, I would have thought that with the extra appearance of depth to the field, the cottage would have looked further away. Checking through the mid-range shots, I have found that as the field gets deeper, the cottage does seem further away and it is only the introduction of foreground interest that brings the cottage closer.

Having discovered these effects, I feel a need to explore my findings further by repeating the exercise with different landscapes. I would also like to explore the effect of the horizon in the same place but with and without foreground interest.