Symmetry in Motion

[Chris Calohan]

[Josh-H]

I find myself looking into the windows wishing something interesting was happening there. 'If' you had been fortunate enough to capture this with people in the windows in various activities it would have been amazing.

[Rob C]

Is it some kind of PS side-effect of an effort to straighten, or is it some sort of lens distortion?

However, having spent an hour-and-a-half undergoing three tests in the eye hospital this mornng, it might simply be part of my problem(s) whatever it/they turn out to be.  Didn't feel a thing other than a single blast of compressed air into each eye and then two different drops.

I think I lost about half-a-pint of sweat during the process.

;-(

Rob C

[WalterEG]

This looks like something that I might shoot in my quest for urban detritus and anomalies.

But there's something that just ain't quite right here.  It looks over-corrected.  I know it is not over-corrected in the physical sense - all the lines of bricks and window frames are extremely precisely aligned to the edges of the frame.  But I suspect that it is aesthetically over-corrected .... and possibly done in post and/or with a tilt shift lens on digital.

What do I mean?  Well in the days of view cameras (and possibly film) the rule of thumb was that you corrected the verticals UP TO and incline of 20º and then let the rest fall as it will.  Sinar went so far as to put a 20º detent on their camera movements so that you could set 20º and then just bring everything back to parallel and tilt the camera from there.

I wonder if these sorts of theories or practices are espoused in the digital world — either of cameras or post-processing.

I do use Photoshop to correct convergence at time and I'd be blowed if I could even work out what the effective angle of incline is or how far it is corrected.  Maybe they simply assume a visual appraisal.

I'd be curious to learn what you used and how you achieved the parallel sides.  I wonder if the might not have been a bit of Free Transform-Skew added somewhere along the line.

Cheers,

Walter

[John R Smith]

It's intriguing, isn't it?

The picture looks wrong, even though the perspective correction is perfect. I have the impression of diverging verticals whenever I look at it. In my own work, with a church tower in the picture (for example), I will usually not completely correct converging verticals for this reason. It's a bit like the rules of perspective which govern the classical orders of Greek architecture, I think.

I'm really not sure what I would do here, as everything lines up to the edge of the frame.

John

[Petrus]

I suppose that because we expect the lines to converge towards the top because the viewpoint is from below and as they do not it looks like they are diverging, even though they are exactly square.

[WalterEG]

I wonder, also, if there is not some bit of optical illusion stuff at play here due to the fact that we are not looking at a flat surface but a flat surface with substantial protruding forms of the windo bays?

Cheers,

W

[Rob C]

Looking more closely, it strikes me that the disconcerting effect is caused by an inversion of the expected vanishing point: it's as if the lower part of each window looks narrower than the top of the same window...

Rob C

[RSL]

It looks narrower because we're used to seeing lines converge toward the top. Chris has done what people used to do with a view camera.

It's decorative, but that's about all.

[Chris Calohan]

Agreed, it is decorative and yes, I tried to do digitally what I would have done with a 4x5 view camera...it's one of those shots that needed corrective measures on the parallels but perhaps I got a bit carried away. I used distort control both in ACR and in CS6 along with some slight perspective control. I used this image more to learn some of the control methods to mimic view camera work..thanks for all the comments.

[WalterEG]

Chris,

I have tilt/shift lenses and I exercise control in software but i find that NOTHING replicates a view camera (or technical camera) where every lens is a tilt/shift, so to speak (or film, for that matter).

As I said earlier in the thread, there is the 20º rule of thumb and it is 'oh, so easy' to keep that in check on a view camera.

And keep up with the 'decorative' work — it has its appeal and becomes part of the detailed documentation of a place in time.

Cheers,