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Straight lines and horizons | Photography tip

That’s right, as I mentioned on the last post and reminded this week on facebook, the photography tips are back on the blog. The idea, from now on, is to share with you every month (more or less) a photography tip that will improve your family photos. I started sharing these tips a few years ago and to those who don’t know them yet or want to recall them, you can check all tips here.

Today’s tip is about horizons and other lines that appear in the image and to which we must pay attention in order to avoid tilted photographs. Every time there’s a tilted horizon in an image,  I automatically rotate my neck to compensate that. That happens whether it’s a photograph from outside where the sea is falling to one of the sides or from indoors with a sliding floor from which a seated kid may fall to.

I must confess though that, no matter how focused I am, I make this mistake a lot. But it bothers me so much that, while editing the images, that’s the first thing I correct. It’s automatic. The ideal, of course, is to nail it when shooting, but that’s not always possible because there are those fun unexpected moments I want to get more than anything else (a kid laughing, a sweet family moment, etc).

The best way to avoid this mistake is to pay attention to lines present in our field of view such as the horizon, doors, windows, etc, and also to have a correct positioning while holding the camera and looking through the viewfinder.

In the following example you can see an image tilted deliberately (notice the window).

dica-fotografia01

I love this picture very much, but it makes me tilt my eyes to the correct direction.

And now, here’s the same image, corrected.

dica-fotografia02

It’s a small detail, but it makes a huge difference. Isn’t this image much more comfortable?

Here are a few more examples:

dica-fotografia03dica-fotografia04dica-fotografia05

However, like in every rule, there a few exceptions. And sometimes an image has such a dynamism and energy that the fact that is tilted doesn’t come into play, or it may help even. The following are a few examples of that.

dica-fotografia06dica-fotografia07

I hope you enjoyed this tip and that it is a helpful one. In a few weeks there’s more. Stay tuned!

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