Most amateur photographers stick to fairly basic methods of photography such as taking pictures of their friends at parties, sleeping pets, or taking portrait pictures of a lover or sibling. Even though all these exercises are worthwhile, of course, if you really want to have fun with your photography, if you want to spice things up a little, then there are virtually an infinite amount of tricks that you can do to make some damned cool photographs. The most fun part of these techniques is forced perspective.
So what is forced perspective? It could be defined as any optical illusion that makes a certain object appear smaller or larger by its placement nearer or farther from the camera. One of the most common examples is the photograph many tourists take with the Leaning Tower of Pisa where they are portrayed either leaning or pushing against the tower or holding it up. This trick has been used by innumerable number of people, to the point where a level of over-saturation has been reached. However, many people still manage to make clever use of the trick.
A good example is The Lord of the Rings films, where you have hobbits – who are supposed to be under four feet – and dwarfs – who are supposed to be of a similar height – all together in scenes with people of normal height. While you might think that this effect is achieved using shorter actors or by digitally editing the scenes, they are not. The scenes were shot with some very clever forced perspective tricks with the ‘hobbits' sitting farther away from the camera and the people of normal height sitting closer. This effect is further enhanced by the clever construction of the sets, which were created in order to make the effect look organic. And, as anyone who has seen the films can attest to, it worked magnificently.