Design Nomenclature / Composition
Vantage
Also called point of view, viewpoint, station point, camera position, POV
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
The position a composition is constructed from — where the eye sits relative to the subject in height, distance, and angle. Vantage decides every overlap, every foreshortening, and every convergence in the image, and nothing later in the pipeline can undo the decision.
In practice
Photographers say viewpoint, 3D people say camera, perspective draughtsmen say station point. Same thing. It's the one choice that cannot be fixed downstream.
Not to be confused with
- CropThe decision of what the frame excludes. Cropping changes scale, weight, and reading all at once — a face cut at the crown reads closer than one with air above it — and it operates on the image's content. What is cut is as compositional as what is kept.
- Linear perspectiveA geometric construction projecting a three-dimensional scene onto the picture plane from one fixed eye point, so that parallel lines converge at vanishing points on a horizon set at eye height. Formalized by Brunelleschi and Alberti in the fifteenth century. It is a drawing system, not a description of vision.