So... I rarely shoot landscapes and am looking for some feedback about what to do when an image looks crooked but isn't.
I was out looking for two of my favorite birds (which I got some ok shots of but wasnt getting anything great) so I took a few shots down the river. The image is level but the reeds on the right look make the image crooked.
Any feedback or suggestions welcome
PS I put in the Fosters Turn and Black Skimmer for fun. Cant mention favorite birds and then not show them!
A relaxing picture.
It looks level to me. Reeds do lean so that is not a problem.
I love that second image Ruth, beautifully captured, definite wall hanger. I wish the water wasn't so distracting, that background is fantastic and very painterly looking all on its own. Nice work.
Agreed! New one added.
Oh yeah, that looks great. A masterful capture, i didn't mention it above but the angle of the bird is spot on, I can really appreciate the bird's form-in-flight.
AWESOME SHOTS
Hi Ruth, if you want to be really meticulous about shots where you feel there is a tiny bit of tilt you should be using the ruler tool in photoshop to draw lines on vertical & horizontal planes and then make corrections with the transform tool. I find that trees and shadows on landscapes tend to create this effect where things 'feel' like they aren't level. Sometimes it can also be attributed to very slight lens distortion.
I played with the skew tool on that image, dropping the right side of the image a hair seems to reduce the feeling of tilt.
I like your bird shots; you do have a lot of noise in the background that could be easily corrected by masking out the bird and NR or blurring the background.
All appreciated Francisco! I learn so much here and really appreciate to time you have taken to help me.
I run into the same thing quite a bit, and it is always with shorelines. Sometimes, I will just tilt the picture until I loose the optical illusion, even though it actually makes the picture "crooked". In the top picture, I think it is also the imbalance from the right the left that makes you feel as though the picture is not level. You can see that effect by using the crop tool, and cropping off all the way until the bank on the left is even with the bank on the right.
Great point I should have mentioned; sometimes images that are dead on straightened will look crooked because of imbalances as Shawn says, and can be adjusted to reduce that perceived crookedness.
Thanks to all for the great tips and feedback!
To my eye, the reeds don't make the image appear to slope, Ruth. They could be selectively "warped" to verticality in post if one wanted. Are you sure the image is straight? I think it's rotated about 1 degree clockwise - perhaps you were compensating for the reeds.
Reflections in still water are precisely under what they reflect, and although the water is not dead still, they seem to have a consistent clockwise bias here.
A complicating factor, if you tilted the camera up, rather than cropping out water to get this image, is convergence, which would make the reeds and trees at the edges slope inwards. This is more marked the wider the lens' field of view. Here the tree closer to the middle and its reflection also slope clockwise a bit.
And you think YOU'RE picky...
I like the tern image, especially.
Very interesting about the reflections. I see what you are saying. I just got this wide angle lens last month and it is a totally new perspective. There are so many images that I would never have attempted because my lenses just couldn't do it and now I can.
This lens is a 17-50mm and I normally use ones in the 70-300mm range. When I got this lens, I also got a 300mm prime manual focus and that one is going back on the market. It takes great images but I don't like the prime for this distance and it is heavy for a manual focus only.
Alternatively, I am loving the wide angle. I did a pet session using this and it came out really well. (I may post a few here as I'd like to get feedback on those but joining a new group isn't of interest as I'm in all I can be and still actively participate.)
Anyway - obviously I'm kicked back with a cup of coffee since I'm being so chatty!
Finally, while I am totally picky ;) in this case I am really just trying to learn about pitfalls in landscape photography. Truthfully, this image doesn't really do much for me. I was just wondering about the idea that, when taking something on a this scale, it can have different issues. It looks crooked to me and even though I think it is mostly an illusion, I was curious about what people would have to say about that.
;)
Thanks for the support and thumbs up on the turn!
Chris, your are spot on with the convergence comment. I shoot a lot of pictures on my 16-35, and at the wide end, any small camera tilt really bends the image. Here is a real beauty....