Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Peter Stacey on September 01, 2013, 11:01:39 pm
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Not being able to get out for the last couple of weeks due to work, thought I might post an older one of mine.
Title is self explanatory, and just a simple record shot:
(http://peterstacey.com/img/2483619358_4391173448_o.jpg)
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That's great!
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Thanks Chris.
A rare glorious summer day in Rotterdam.
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Very nice, Peter, but maybe you overdid the perspective correction?
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Very nice, Peter, but maybe you overdid the perspective correction?
I suspect, Russ, that Peter's answer will be that all the lines are perfectly parallel. And there lies the problem with indiscriminate use of t&s lenses and software correction. If street level is included in the picture, and it appears to the viewer as if the vantage point is also from the street, our (viewer's) brain will perceive a tall building as becoming narrower at the top. Now, if we force it with t&s and software corrections, i.e., make everything absolutely parallel, our brain will overcompensate, resulting in the top seemingly wider than the bottom of the building.
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Exactly.
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Very nice, Peter, but maybe you overdid the perspective correction?
Yeah, I agree. It looks weird as is.
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I suspect, Russ, that Peter's answer will be that all the lines are perfectly parallel. And there lies the problem with indiscriminate use of t&s lenses and software correction. If street level is included in the picture, and it appears to the viewer as if the vantage point is also from the street, our (viewer's) brain will perceive a tall building as becoming narrower at the top. Now, if we force it with t&s and software corrections, i.e., make everything absolutely parallel, our brain will overcompensate, resulting in the top seemingly wider than the bottom of the building.
Slobodan, I have said this before and I will say it again, you really are a font of knowledge. I could see that something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't work out what it was until I read your reply and you pointed it out for me. Distortion correction has pushed the pixels around within the image to make all the straight lines look parallel instead of converging, which then looks incorrect to our eyes when applied to an image taken from a point of view where we would expect to see lines converging.
I like the idea of the shot BTW, with the new seeming to grow out of the centre of the old, but I also do not know what the solution could be to what Slobodan has now pointed out, other than maybe trying to find a higher vantage point from which to retake the shot, which of course may not be possible.
Dave
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... I also do not know what the solution could be...
I believe, like with polarizers, the best course of action would be to find the maximum, and then to back off slightly.
The other option, though not always feasible, would be to exclude the street level, thus denying the viewer the reference point. In the latter case, the viewer would assume that the photographer had a higher vantage point.
An example would be (not to toot my own horn, but that's what I have handy right now) in my thread Sunset in The City (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=81305.0), the first (absolutely parallel) and the last image (uncorrected).
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And there lies the problem with indiscriminate use of t&s lenses and software correction.
I liked the distorted aspect of the building that was presented by an architect friend of mine in a bridge design he did:
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/rotterdam/rijnhaven_bridge_competition.htm
I was kind of going for the same thing, but it clearly needs explanation and looks weird, especially in a photograph.
Rotterdam is kind of unique because the dutch adopted architecture as an artform post WWII where form is seen to be equal to function (and in many cases it appears that form dominated over function in the design). Rotterdam, having been levelled in 1940 has built up some amazing shapes over the last 50 years. A lot of buildings have shapes that deliberately present optical illusions, including buildings with non-parallel sides, sloped sides and tilted buildings. It's an amazing city to live close to, rivalled for it's modern architecture only by Almere (just east of Amsterdam) and both a great places for photographers to visit when in The Netherlands.
But in this case, the distortion looks strange.
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Pretty much anyone I knew doing architectural work always refrained from correcting to the perfectly correct (a photographer's concept, anyway), which is inevitably the wrong way to go about it. A picture has to look real. Desert that maxim, and you fall into comedy. It might be crisp as hell, parallel as hell, but then it will also look like hell.
A grid screen is a great aid in judging when to stop, but on small cameras it ain't at its best, and almost useless other than for lining up horizons if you shoot at the seaside a lot.
Rob C
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I liked the distorted aspect of the building that was presented by an architect friend of mine in a bridge design he did:
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/rotterdam/rijnhaven_bridge_competition.htm
I was kind of going for the same thing, but it clearly needs explanation and looks weird, especially in a photograph...
The reason it worked for your friend is that he placed horizon in the middle. Try that and your photograph will look the same.
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The reason it worked for your friend is that he placed horizon in the middle. Try that and your photograph will look the same.
If I had a boat I would... ;D
One step further back and I'd be swimming unfortunately.
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Then use the widest wide angle you have, place the horizon in the middle, and then discard the uninteresting foreground by cropping.
Lovely colors in the OP shot, btw.
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Or just go back to normal distortion correction, which will be easier. The shot is an older one and I wouldn't repeat it again now. I'm more into street than architecture at the moment (not that you'd know it from the images I've been posting, which have mostly been buildings).
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One thing I love in new ACR is it's "Upright" buttons. In most cases it does the job with a single click. Better yet, you can use ACR as a filter once you're in Photoshop CC.