When you take a photo, In the narrow-angle, long distance photo, all of features are in correct proportion to one another the left eye is the same size as the right eye, nose, chin, and other features all agree, size-wise.

If you take a look at the wide-angle, close distance photo, you'll notice that there's a lot of distortion everywhere. right eye is bigger than the left eye, right cheek and the tip of the nose jump out.

They're much larger in proportion to her other features, compared to the "correct" proportion in the narrow angle photo.

What we're seeing here is a change in perspective: the closer you are to the subject, the more distorted things become - you'll notice that the features of the face that are closer to the camera (right eye, right cheek, nose) are larger than the features that are farther away, such as the left cheek, or left eye.

When you're very far from the subject, however, these differences go away - everything is in about equal proportion for the photo that is far away.

"Depth" of Image: Related to distortion is the "depth" of the image. At long distance, the subject, while in good proportion, looks very "flat". Stare at the image - can you imagine if it wasn't a picture of a real person, but was instead a life-size cardboard cutout version instead?

At close distance, however, the distortion makes the depth very apparent - you can tell exactly what is closer to you and what's farther away, and the photograph has a "3D feel" to it.

Background: Another difference is the viewable background. In all three photos we maintain the same size of the subject, but the background doesn't remain constant at all. With a wide angle of view, we end up capturing much more of the background, and with a narrow angle of view we capture very little of the background.

This is a very important consideration to make when you take any portrait - do you want the portrait to focus on just the person themself?

If this is the case, using a narrow angle of view will usually leave the background very "clean". on the other side, if you want to include the background to give better context, a wide angle may be a better choice, since it leaves in more of the background.

experimenting with different perspectives and vantage points. Find a person to do a portrait with, or just pick a random object. Like your experimented with lighting, experiment with the angle of view and subject distance -

try shots from up-close with a wide-angle, or shots from far away with a narrow angle, figure out what kind of perspective you want for the shot.

Assignment Summary:

The subject content is pretty flexible: Find a person and do a portrait session. If you have no photogenic friends, you may use an inanimate object or animal, or try doing a building.
Experiment with changing up your angle of view and subject distance - pay attention to the kind of perspective that you want.