Barren landscape with walkers
Landscape,  Lens-Artists,  Photographic techniques,  Themed galleries

Gallery: a sense of scale

August 20, 2024 / 53 Comments

OK, one last time. These are small, but the ones out there are far away. Small… Far away… Ah forget it.

from Father Ted, a British sitcom

The quote above comes from one of my favourite scenes in this classic sitcom. Ted is trying to explain perspective, using some toy cows and some real ones in a distant field. Dougal doesn’t get it. He thinks that the toy cows are the same size as the real cows because their closeness to him makes them appear so. It’s the same effect that can make a coin appear to be the same size as the moon! We all know it isn’t of course, based our learned experience of both coin and moon, but if you’re looking at something for the first time you may need visual clues to understand its scale.

If you’ve not seen Father Ted you can see a clip of that scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0

Photographs are a wonderful way of capturing the world around us. Whether we’re aiming for pure realism or something more creative, for the most part we include recognisable subjects in our images. But without context, photos don’t always give a proper sense of scale. They lack the cues, context, and perspective that our eyes and brain use to judge size and distance in the real world.

So how to show scale?

An obvious solution is to include an object whose size is known to us, such as a person. We may not know their exact height, but we know the likely range. With that visual clue to help our eyes, they can more easily understand the scale of any other object in the image.

While there are other devices we can use to show a sense of scale, it is this one I have chosen mainly to focus on for Sofia’s Lens Artists challenge this week. But I do have a few other tricks to share too!

Carving of a toadstool

In this image (taken in Blackwater Arboretum, Hampshire) there are no clues to help you determine the size of the little toadstool carving. I’d love you to guess before scrolling down to my next shot.

Large wooden carved acorn with a tiny carved toadstool on top

Here you begin to understand that the toadstool is very small, probably smaller than you at first imagined? The grass gives a sense of the size of the wooden acorn sculpture on which it is perched.

Small frog on a leaf
Pandanus frog
Tiny reptile on a coin on a hand
Brookesia minima chameleon

In Madagascar it was hard to portray the small size of this tiny pandanus frog (about the size of your thumbnail, by the way). So when we came across the minute brookesia minima chameleons later in our trip Chris fished a euro coin from his pocket and our guide posed one on it for scale.

Two very large statues with flowers at their feet

As I mentioned above, including a person is a classic way to reveal scale. Would you be able to fully appreciate the height of these statues of North Korea’s Great Leaders on Mansudae Hill in Pyongyang if I hadn’t included the man laying flowers at their feet?

Large mosaic map of the world

And looking down at the map of the world at the foot of the Monument to the Discoveries in Belem, Portugal, you can judge its scale by the tourists exploring it.

Here are some more examples, in some cases paired with a similar image lacking any people
Edge of a rocky canyon

A view of Wadi Nakhal in Oman, with a group of people included (top right) to add scale to the landscape.

Barren landscape with a glacier

By Sólheimajökull, a glacier in the south of Iceland. Can you make out the tiny people far right? The red jacket worn by one may help you spot them!

My feature photo was also taken near here.

Panorama of a wide waterfall with snow and ice

Another shot from Iceland, this time a wintery one of the upper falls at Gullfoss. There are more tiny people to spot, this time on the far left. I say ‘tiny’ but of course they are normal size. It is their apparent tininess that tells us how wide these falls must be.

People at the foot of a high waterfall
Woman in a raincoat walking by a waterfall

Still in Iceland, a pair of shots taken at Skógafoss, again using people to demonstrate scale. It isn’t difficult to feel dwarfed by the scale of the natural features in that country!

Large waterfall
Two people at the foot of a large waterfall

Another waterfall, this time Ulim Falls in North Korea. It is much easier to appreciate the scale of the falls in my right-hand shot, in which I have included two of the people from our tour group.

Very tall tree
Man standing at the foot of a large tree

The ‘World’s largest spruce tree’ at the Rain Forest Resort, Lake Quinault, WA. Although I almost managed to get the whole tree into a wide-angle shot, on the left, I need this second right-hand one, with my husband obligingly posing, to really show its true size.

Very large sand dune with people on top

You won’t recognise him from here, but that’s my husband again, this time on top of Dune 45 at Sossusvlei in Namibia (he’s the lone figure on the left of the group). Comparing those at the top with the man at the foot of the dune also helps to add to our sense of its size.

People on top of a rock window with view through it of a distant river

This is a scan of a rather old (1993) slide taken on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The people show the scale of the rock formation, while the trees in the foreground help to provide a sense of the distance between this point and the river below.

It isn’t only landscapes that may need people to provide scale. This is ‘The Virgin Mother’ by Damien Hirst at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The children help to emphasise its height, as does my tilted camera angle.

Large sculpture of a woman partly cut away to show body parts
Turquoise lake and tall mountains

Of course it doesn’t have to be a person providing the sense of scale. In this shot taken in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, the vehicle parked bottom left achieves the same effect.

Stone cairns in a mountain landscape

Finally, a couple of examples demonstrating how to give a different kind of scale, this time of distance rather than size. In this shot, taken in the Peruvian foothills of the Andes, we know instinctively that the mountains must be far larger than the small stone cairns in the foreground. Armed with that information, gleaned from experience, our brains are able to deduce that the mountains are some distance away.

Wooden piles with pigeons and a distant statue

And of course we all know that the Statue of Liberty is bigger than a pigeon. Don’t we?!

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