Reply To: Need some critiques :)

[kbee]

CTM – tilted angles aren’t necessarily a no-no, but let me put it this way: there are those so-called “rules” in photography. Dutch angles are traditionally intended to convey unease or tension. So you can break those rules, but I want to understand WHY you broke them.

What is the point of tilting the camera in this shot? What did it achieve? Did it improve the shot? Some people are dead set against Dutch angles; I’m tolerant as long as they’re an artistic exception and not the rule. I went through a tog’s gallery not long ago and each. and. every. one. was. angled. I spent the entire time with my head tilted to the left, wondering if the tog’s left foot was amputated, causing a permanent tilt to her photos.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=348149448619096&set=a.196205227146853.31419.194647207302655&type=3&theater Like Sassy pointed out, why angle this? You have really strong lines here, and yet it looks like the walk is tilting to the side about to slide into a ravine or something.

I’ve been guilty of doing dutch angles, but only last week and mostly intentionally as experimentation. What I found was:

a.) I’m frustrated because now I cannot, in post, straighten them out and retain sufficient background for a good crop (or if I did, I would have to carefully recreate it without making it look obvious);

b.) I was doing it because I was lazy with my 50mm prime lens. Instead of backing up to frame my subject better with a horizontal plane, I tilted the lens to fit them in to the shot;

c.) I cannot justify any artistic reason for doing it in the first place, except to “give it a shot”. It looked trendy, but that’s about it. It didn’t make the shot pop better than a straight one.

A photo I did last weekend, while I think is very sound technically and one of my favorites in terms of quality, I am annoyed at because it’s angled steeply and I know the people here at YANAP would be quick to point it out. I can’t justify quite why I did the angle, not sufficiently.

Hope that gives a bit of insight.