Voss

Comments and criticism welcome.

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mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

An example for my posts on "Is PP allowed for "Traditional Street Photography"?.. I would have straightened this one.

Voss

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you're referring to leveling it, I used the pillar on the right as my vertical. No matter what element was used, others would be out of alignment because of the perspective.

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

You can straighten AND fix the converging verticals. For many street photos, the queasy and somewhat disorienting feeling the viewer gets from lens and perspective distortion is intended and adds to the desired effect. I did not think that was the intent of this shot.

Voss

But all the verticals are not converging. Note the pillars--they are diverging. Can this be fixed?

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

Yes. It can be fixed. With your permission I will fix it the way I do with my shots and upload the result here.

Voss

Yes, please do. And also please outline how you did it.

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

I use Paint Shop Pro. With the straighten tool and the perspective tool it's very easy. It took me less than a minute to load the image and make the changes. Here's a tutorial video:

http://youtu.be/sk_MNwPakSs

After PSP changes

(Download)

Voss

Thanks, I like it. I use PS Elements. Will have to see if it has a similar device.

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

Here's a tutorial using PS Elements:

http://youtu.be/5TpfxUnYC3E

It's a little more complicated than PSP, as you use sliders to adjust vertical and horizontal perspective separately -- and you have to "eye ball" it to see when it is correct.

Voss

Thanks, again. Will have to play around with this one.

waegwan Loc: Mae Won Li

Judging from the bottom rung of the railing it looks like a very popular place to sit and rest one's feet. Nice shot, thanks for sharing. :)

waegwan Loc: Mae Won Li

I think it does look better. Here they are side by side. I'm always sensitive to too much PP in street stuff but as I have mentioned before IMO it is/should be necessary to the point if correcting the camera to what the photographer originally seen. Thanks. :)

Chinese Chess original left fixed right

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Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Pesonally, I think the "fixed" version looks "fixed". It is straight up and down, and feels confined. The original lacked that feeling and instead has a "trailing of away from the highlight" feeling about the left side of the image.

Why is that and what is the significance?

Our eyes don't actually lie to us about what we see, our brain is what does that. But through the distortion of our brain we can be trained (or perhaps have a talent) to see what is there even if we don't take real notice of it. That is a great deal of what Street Photography is about: it is straight photography, where we are not an unbiased photojournalist, but rather we are indeed trying to show what is not the usual about every day life.

What we do is adjust our perspective and framing, by changing location, when shooting an image! How we feel about an image is what we see, and what the camera sees, instead of how the brain manipulates it. That is the whole point!

Different people clearly react differently. We see people here on UHH arguing about whether an image is level or not, when it is literally one pixel off, left side to right side! Hilarious! But on the other hand there are many photographers, and most of them are perhaps Street Photographers, who really do not want to see images level with the horizon. Winogrand was famous for that, but it was true of Meyerowitz, Arbus, Robert Frank, Mary Ellen Mark, and others.

mallen1330 Loc: Chicago western suburbs

I agree that "Our eyes don't actually lie to us..." I disagree that our brain is lying to us. When I tilt my head, the image I see does not look tilted. If I tilt my camera, the resulting image looks tilted. The horizon actually IS level. The horizontal lines are actually horizontal. The vertical lines are actually vertical -- that's the reality. No matter how hard I try, I cannot make my brain cause the curving lines of wide-angel barrel distortion.

A photograph can provide many distortions. In many cases -- especially "street" -- the distortions are the intent of the photographer, and add to the drama or composition of the scene. In many other cases, the photo was simply taken in haste as a candid capture of the moment, resulting in unintentional distortions. In many other cases, lens barrel distortion, causing curved lines, is not intentional, nor does it add to the "good feeling" in the viewer. On the contrary, in most cases, these distortions cause a queasy feeling of unreality in the viewer.


And, we see people here on UHH arguing about whether an image is "street" or "traditional street" or not. Is fixing lens distortion "breaking the rules"? The early masters of street did not have the tools we have now. Should we not use them? Should street be only in B&W because that's the way the masters did it?

IMHO, there are NO rules for artists. The only rules or guidelines are like, "If you want your photo (painting, sculpture), to look like so-and-so's, here's how. PP, including lens distortion correction, is not a rule or always necessary, but can make SOME photos "better" in my view.

For the image in question, in my opinion, the adjustments made it better.