Bird's-eye view

Last updated March 15, 2024

A literal bird's eye view, shot by the bird itself with a GoPro camera someone placed on it

A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object or location from a very steep viewing angle, creating a perspective as if the observer were a bird in flight looking downwards. Bird's-eye views can be an aerial photograph, but also a drawing, and are often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps.^[1]

Before crewed flight was common, the term "bird's eye" was used to distinguish views drawn from direct observation at high vantage locations (e.g. a mountain or tower), from those constructed from an imagined bird's perspectives. Bird's eye views as a genre have existed since classical times. They were significantly popular in the mid-to-late 19th century in the United States and Europe as photographic prints.

Terminology

The terms aerial view and aerial viewpoint are also sometimes used synonymous with bird's-eye view. The term aerial view can refer to any view from a great height, even at a wide angle, as for example when looking sideways from an airplane window or from a mountain top. Overhead view is fairly synonymous with bird's-eye view but tends to imply a vantage point of a lesser height than the latter term. For example, in computer and video games, an "overhead view" of a character or situation often places the vantage point only a few feet (a meter or two) above human height. See top-down perspective.

Recent^{[ when? ]} technological and networking developments have made satellite images more accessible. Microsoft Bing Maps offers direct overhead satellite photos of the entire planet but also offers a feature named Bird's eye view in some locations. The Bird's Eye photos are angled at 40 degrees rather than being straight down. Satellite imaging programs and photos have been described as offering a viewer the opportunity to "fly over" and observe the world from this specific angle.

In filmmaking and video production, a bird's-eye shot refers to a shot looking directly down on the subject. The perspective is very foreshortened, making the subject appear short and squat. This shot can be used to give an overall establishing shot of a scene, or to emphasise the smallness or insignificance of the subjects. It is shot by lifting the camera up by hands or by hanging it off something strong enough to support it. When a scene needs a large area shot, it is a crane shot.

Bird's-eye views are common in the broadcasting of sports events, especially in the 21st century, with the increased usage of the Skycam and other devices like it, such as the CableCam and Spidercam.

Gallery

Bird's-eye view of operations during the Paraguayan War from James Allen's observation balloon, 1868
Aerial view of the City of London, 2011
View of Sydney from an airliner
Flying above the ESO's Atacama Large Millimeter Array site
Bird's eye view wood-engraving of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 1909
Aerial view of Disneyland in 2004
Painting of Schiphol Airport by the Dutch artist Janneke Viegers
Bird's-eye view of Campos do Jordão, Brazil with tilt shift lens effect
National Stadium in Karachi, Pakistan

Bird's-flight view

A distinction is sometimes drawn between a bird's-eye view and a bird's-flight view, or "view-plan in isometrical projection".^[2] Whereas a bird's-eye view shows a scene from a single viewpoint (real or imagined) in true perspective, including, for example, the foreshortening of more distant features, a bird's-flight view combines a vertical plan of ground-level features with perspective views of buildings and other standing features, all presented at roughly the same scale.^[3] The landscape appears "as it would unfold itself to any one passing over it, as in a balloon, at a height sufficient to abolish sharpness of perspective, and yet low enough to allow of distinct view of the scene beneath".^[4] The technique was popular among local surveyors and cartographers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Related Research Articles

A point of view shot is a film scene—usually a short one—that is shot as if through the eyes of a character. The camera shows what the subject's eyes would see. It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction. The POV technique is one of the foundations of film editing.

Project Mogul was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high-altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. The project was carried out from 1947 until early 1949. It was a classified portion of an unclassified project by New York University (NYU) atmospheric researchers. The project was moderately successful, but was very expensive and was superseded by a network of seismic detectors and air sampling for fallout, which were cheaper, more reliable, and easier to deploy and operate.

Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera. It has uses in photography, filmmaking and architecture.

Cinematography is the art of motion picture photography.

Orthographic projection is a means of representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions. Orthographic projection is a form of parallel projection in which all the projection lines are orthogonal to the projection plane, resulting in every plane of the scene appearing in affine transformation on the viewing surface. The obverse of an orthographic projection is an oblique projection, which is a parallel projection in which the projection lines are not orthogonal to the projection plane.

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Linear or point-projection perspective is one of two types of graphical projection perspective in the graphic arts; the other is parallel projection. Linear perspective is an approximate representation, generally on a flat surface, of an image as it is seen by the eye. Perspective drawing is useful for representing a three-dimensional scene in a two-dimensional medium, like paper.

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In production, a shot is the moment that the camera starts rolling until the moment it stops.
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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Low-angle shot</span> Camera angle

In cinematography, a low-angle shot, is a shot from a camera angle positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eye line, looking up. Sometimes, it is even directly below the subject's feet. Psychologically, the effect of the low-angle shot is that it makes the subject look strong and powerful.

This article contains a list of cinematic techniques that are divided into categories and briefly described.

A high-angle shot is a cinematic technique where the camera looks down on the subject from a high angle and the point of focus often gets "swallowed up".

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Vantage point may refer to:

Pictometry is a patented aerial survey technique for producing oblique georeferenced imagery showing the fronts and sides of buildings and locations on the ground. Photos are captured by low-flying airplanes, depicting up to 12 perspectives as well as an orthogonal (overhead) view of every location flown. These perspectives are then stitched together to create composite aerial maps that may span many miles of terrain. Because they are captured at an angle, the pixels in the resulting images are trapezoidal, rather than rectangular. This necessitates special software and algorithms to accurately determine objects’ size and position on the maps.

References

↑ Donger, Simon (2018). Scenography. The Crowood Press LTD. ISBN 978-1-78500-454-4.
↑ Hurst, Herbert (1899). "Introduction". Oxford Topography: an essay. Oxford Historical Society. Vol. 39. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society. pp. 1–12 (4–5).
↑ Ravenhill, William (1986). "Bird's-eye view & bird's-flight view". The Map Collector. 35: 36–7.
↑ Hurst 1899, p. 4.

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[1] Donger, Simon (2018). Scenography. The Crowood Press LTD. ISBN 978-1-78500-454-4.

[2] Hurst, Herbert (1899). "Introduction". Oxford Topography: an essay. Oxford Historical Society. Vol. 39. Oxford: Oxford Historical Society. pp. 1–12 (4–5).

[3] Ravenhill, William (1986). "Bird's-eye view & bird's-flight view". The Map Collector. 35: 36–7.

[4] Hurst 1899, p. 4.

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