How to Take Great Low-Angle Photos With Your Smartphone

by Edward Harper August 13, 2025

Most smartphone shots are taken from eye level, but that’s exactly why they can feel dull. My favorite technique requires nothing more than crouching down and pointing up. It may sound simple, but this can have a dramatic impact on your photos.

How Low-Angle Shots Can Make a Big Difference

Lowering the angle at which you take a photograph can make a huge difference to the final look and feel of said shot.

For starters, low-angle shots offer a new, and often unique, perspective on the subject you're capturing. Imagine a popular tourist destination, where everyone else is standing up straight and shooting the same basic shot. If you crouch down and angle your camera upwards at the subject instead, you'll be capturing a perspective that no one else has.

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Shooting from low angles can also add drama to very ordinary subjects. While trees can make for a beautiful subject, especially when shot in the fall, they are, ultimately, quite boring. However, by crouching down and shooting up, you can make an ordinary tree look like an imposing giant. And the same effect can even be used on humans to give them a heroic vibe.

How to Take Great-Looking Low-Angle Shots

While I have so far emphasized the simplicity of capturing low-angle photography, there are some extra tips to help you take things to the next level.

Use Your Viewfinder Wisely

The first, and most basic, tip is to use your viewfinder wisely. While you should be doing this with every shot anyway, making sure you line a subject up properly and take everything being captured into account, it's even more important with low-angle shots.

This is because it's easy to get a low-angle shot badly wrong. If you miss the mark, the results will be very disappointing. So, be sure to line everything up and get your composition right by looking in the viewfinder before clicking the virtual shutter button.

Focus on a Specific Subject

The best low-angle shots focus on one specific subject. Sure, you can include other elements in the photo, but the core subject should be the clear hero of the photo, with everything else playing a supporting role.

Low-angle photography ramps up the drama of a shot, hence the need for each shot to feature a hero. Use secondary elements to provide context and flavor without diluting the majesty of the core subject.

Take Several Photos From Different Angles

While low-angle shots should obviously all be shot from a low angle, other angles can be adjusted. If I'm shooting from a low angle, I'll always take several shots from slightly different positions.

This is because the most committed look through the viewfinder cannot always be trusted. Drop lower, aim higher, shift your phone to the left and right, and generally speaking, just take a range of shots that you can choose from later.

Use Leading Lines and Interesting Shapes

Last but not least is the need to look for leading lines and interesting shapes when shooting from low angles. Both of these can help the composition of any photo, but they're particularly helpful when shooting low-angle photography.

Why? Because low-angle shots require the viewer to be drawn into the photo. And both leading lines and interesting shapes help with that, providing visual cues that human eyes naturally follow.

Subjects That Benefit From Low-Angle Shots

While any subject that you care to mention can benefit from being shot from a low angle, certain subjects really benefit from the exercise.

Large Objects

By shooting from a low angle, you can emphasize and exaggerate the size and scale of large objects. Essentially, this makes them look even more impressive and awe-inspiring than they would when shot from a more regular angle.

Look to angle your shot to make the large object look as large and looming as possible. As low-angle shots of large objects are all about exaggerating the actual size.

Animals

As you can see above, animals look absolutely magnificent when shot from a low angle. This is partly because you're physically getting down to their level, making them feel more comfortable while you shoot away. Just be careful to only take this chance on non-dangerous animals or pets you know well.

Beyond making animals feel more comfortable and, therefore, more photogenic, shooting one from a low angle also makes them look more substantial. This ordinary-sized labrador literally fills the frame here, and the result is a photo that I'm not only proud of but enjoy looking at.

People

There are a lot of ways to improve your portrait photography. However, shooting from below is an oft-forgotten option. However, by shooting people from low angles, you can make them look bigger, bolder, and more heroic than they otherwise would do. And your choice of lower angle can introduce other effects too, making your subject look stoic, brave, or even younger.

A lot of people now shoot selfies and portrait photos from above, as that helps beautify faces and features. However, shooting from below is worth experimenting with, as it can make your subject look vastly different (for better or worse).

Nature

Last but not least, on the subjects that benefit from being shot from a low angle, are natural objects. That includes trees, flowers, or even bodies of water. By lowering the angle at which you're shooting, you can celebrate the majesty of nature.

Trees are the most obvious example here, as they grow from the ground up. Which means a shot following that same pattern is the most obvious angle to pursue. The end result is a photo showing a tree from its best angle, and one that will draw viewers' eyes in.

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Low-angle photography provides an easy way to add a dramatic flair to your smartphone shots. And all it takes is for you to crouch low and point your camera up; something that doesn't require masses of knowledge or expensive equipment.

Sure, there are certain subjects that benefit most from low-angle photography, and certain tips to help you achieve better shots, but ultimately, it's a simple-yet-effective technique.