Camera Tilt - A Mini-Rant

[Pugs]

Out of 180 degrees of possible tilt, there is only a 0.5% chance that the ideal composition will be one that is not tilted.

The question should be: why so little camera tilt?

Because statistical probability has no correlation whatsoever to creativity?

Because you assuming that ALL 180 degrees of tilt have equal artistic merit and that's simply not true?

Personally I think that it's a combination of the two...

 

[djacobox372]

Out of 180 degrees of possible tilt, there is only a 0.5% chance that the ideal composition will be one that is not tilted.

The question should be: why so little camera tilt?

Because statistical probability has no correlation whatsoever to creativity?

Because you assuming that ALL 180 degrees of tilt have equal artistic merit and that's simply not true?

Personally I think that it's a combination of the two...

I for one would not recommend elevating the "artistic merit" of any given composition over another, otherwise you may miss something amazing that you weren't looking for.

 

[Pugs]

Out of 180 degrees of possible tilt, there is only a 0.5% chance that the ideal composition will be one that is not tilted.

The question should be: why so little camera tilt?

Because statistical probability has no correlation whatsoever to creativity?

Because you assuming that ALL 180 degrees of tilt have equal artistic merit and that's simply not true?

Personally I think that it's a combination of the two...

I for one would not recommend elevating the "artistic merit" of any given composition over another, otherwise you may miss something amazing that you weren't looking for.

So... you're recommending that every shot be taken at all 180 degrees just so that you don't miss something?

Seriously, I'm an IT Project Manager and Management Consultant. I spend my working life immersed in numbers, probabilities, statistical analysis, etc... When you have odds like 1 out of 180, you find ways to narrow that down and be more precise. You use things like your past experience, the examples of those who came before you, the knowledge of those who have put in more time and study, and so on to make it so that you're NOT reinventing the wheel with every shot.

To use your logic, I my camera can handle shutter speeds from 30 seconds to 1/8000 seconds; I need to try every one of the shutter speed settings it can handle so that I don't miss something even though my experience, the examples of those who've gone before me, the knowledge of those who've put in more time and study say that a 30 second exposure won't work at Noon in direct sunlight a f/1.8.

Your argument lacks logic and is somewhat pedantic.

 

[javier]

Pugs,
I was thinking about you the day before yesterday as I was pp some images I took a few months back..
This is an intentional tilt by the way.

 

[Peyton]

In the mini-rant thread about camera tilt, a couple of people brought up some of my other photographic pet-peeves. I thought that it would be fun to see what sets all of your teeth on edge so if you have photographic pet-peeves.

 

[manaheim]

Oh hey LOOK! Another rant thread by Pugs! How exceptionally beneficial.

Here, Pugs, try this...

John Singer Sargent walks up to Pablo Picasso...
JSS: "Good lord, man, that doesn't even look like a woman! There are RULES to painting people, you know. Here, let me just fix that for you..."

Can you imagine Pablo's reaction to this?

Tell me, exactly, how you or anyone who dabbles in the artistry of anything gets to set rules or even guidelines of what is acceptable or appropriate.

What each individual artist does is up to them. If it doesn't happen to click with you, then so be it. It didn't click. Maybe it wasn't supposed to. Who knows? Who cares. Stop trying to dictate to people what they can and cannot do with their artistic tools.

Look ...

Man, I not only tilted this but I did an HDR! Oh noes! I must have done it to be trendy, because there's absolutely no way that I felt that it accentuated the chaos of the room and brought out the rich deep warm tones of the various objects contained within in a way that only an HDR could! Heavens no! Lemming city!

You know if you spend half as much time growing your skills as you did semi-blindly criticizing the artistic choices of others, you might actually learn something.

And don't give me this tongue and cheek stuff... I ain't buying it.

 

[Derrel]

Sorry to be so blunt, but the tilt does nothing to make these "good photos". These could be tilted another .003 degrees or another 30 degrees, and nothing would elevate these into a "silk purse". Sorry...but if all it took to make these kinds of subject matter "good photos" or "more creative" then all anybody would need to do was to cant the camera. And I assume, the more seriously canted the camera the better the photos would be. Right???

 

[javier]

Sorry to be so blunt, but the tilt does nothing to make these "good photos". These could be tilted another .003 degrees or another 30 degrees, and nothing would elevate these into a "silk purse". Sorry...but if all it took to make these kinds of subject matter "good photos" or "more creative" then all anybody would need to do was to cant the camera. And I assume, the more seriously canted the camera the better the photos would be. Right???

Derrel, I took no offense. I am quite sure you are the cats meow.

 

[Derrel]

No offense intended Javier, but would you like to tell me just what the tilt does for the shot? Does the tilting make the bustlines on the two young women larger? I mean, I am familiar with your work and the heavy emphasis on top-heavy honies

 

[kajiki]

you talking about Dutch Tilt

or tilt/shift (fake miniature)?

 

[manaheim]

Sorry to be so blunt, but the tilt does nothing to make these "good photos". These could be tilted another .003 degrees or another 30 degrees, and nothing would elevate these into a "silk purse". Sorry...but if all it took to make these kinds of subject matter "good photos" or "more creative" then all anybody would need to do was to cant the camera. And I assume, the more seriously canted the camera the better the photos would be. Right???

You miss the point... by a country mile.

When did I say the tilt made the shot a "good photo"? I didn't.

And when did you get tapped on the shoulder to be the guy who determines what a good photo is? You didn't.

THAT'S the point.

When I, the artist, saw that scene, Ilooked up and saw that frame in my minds eye, and said "oh wow, that's so cool" and that's the frame I composed and took. It's exactly what I wanted, and I love it.

Could it have maybe worked straight? Maybe. That's not what I wanted.

As Chiller (now gone because of stuff like this) says... "My camera, my vision, my rules."

You don't like it? Awesome. I applaud your individual style choices and being aware of them, but if you don't like it just because you have some preconceived notion of it being "wrong" or because "you don't get it", then I feel very bad for you.

I think most of Picaso's work is absolutely hideous and I wouldn't personally choose to pain that way, but under no circumstances would I walk up to the man (were he alive) and suggest that what he was doing was wrong. Perhaps you would.

 

[manaheim]

No offense intended Javier, but would you like to tell me just what the tilt does for the shot? Does the tilting make the bustlines on the two young women larger? I mean, I am familiar with your work and the heavy emphasis on top-heavy honies

And would you mind explaining just how you think it would be better without it, or what the tilt does to "hurt" the image artistically?

 

[c.cloudwalker]

The human brain expects an horizon line to be horizontal therefore when it is not we look for a reason as to why it was tilted. Which is why most people agree that when one puts the guidelines aside, it should be for a reason.

Now, I do agree that the artist is the ultimate decider of how to create his/her own work. But the viewer ultimately decides whether to buy or not and, will he buy something he does not understand? Not that that really matters.

I've also said before that the artist is not always conscious of why he/she does certain things in certain ways. We get a feeling and just go with it.

That said, I have to agree with Derrel that the tilt doesn't add anything to Javier's image. Or if it does, I just don't see it.

As for Manaheim's image, I don't think it would be as good without the tilt. Without, it would just be another image with skewed perspective due to the angle. The tilt actually adds to the chaos.

That said, I would not hang either image on my wall. You both have done much better. And that is more important. I don't like tilt much but it is not going to keep me from liking an image. I also won't like an image just because it is not tilted.

Cheers.

 

[manaheim]

^ nicely said.

 

[Pugs]

Oh hey LOOK! Another rant thread by Pugs! How exceptionally beneficial.

Here, Pugs, try this...

John Singer Sargent walks up to Pablo Picasso...
JSS: "Good lord, man, that doesn't even look like a woman! There are RULES to painting people, you know. Here, let me just fix that for you..."

Can you imagine Pablo's reaction to this?

Tell me, exactly, how you or anyone who dabbles in the artistry of anything gets to set rules or even guidelines of what is acceptable or appropriate.

What each individual artist does is up to them. If it doesn't happen to click with you, then so be it. It didn't click. Maybe it wasn't supposed to. Who knows? Who cares. Stop trying to dictate to people what they can and cannot do with their artistic tools.

Look ...

Man, I not only tilted this but I did an HDR! Oh noes! I must have done it to be trendy, because there's absolutely no way that I felt that it accentuated the chaos of the room and brought out the rich deep warm tones of the various objects contained within in a way that only an HDR could! Heavens no! Lemming city!

You know if you spend half as much time growing your skills as you did semi-blindly criticizing the artistic choices of others, you might actually learn something.

And don't give me this tongue and cheek stuff... I ain't buying it.

Oh... wow... And this from the author of the pact. And for someone who claimed to not have a problem with me, you're thrown a few pointed barbs here.

You seem to be reacting as if I had created thread after thread after thread of rants, when in reality there have been exactly two. Both on the same day. Perhaps I was having a bad day or perhaps I was trying to make a point about the difference between making an artistic choice and simply doing something without understanding why one is doing it or because "it's cool". It's actually a combination of the two (in my opinion). I was being a bit pissy that day and I did want to make a point. It WAS mildly tongue-in-cheek, but that apparently wasn't well conveyed.

In both this thread and in the photographic pet-peeves thread, I thought I had made it clear that ALL of the techniques that I was ranting about have their place and they ALL are useful tools. My beef is with the random application of a cool technique that someone saw somewhere without any artistic thought or intention behind it.

You mentioned Picasso and he is actually a FANTASTIC example of what I'm talking about. Picasso studied art from a young age. He didn't just do Cubism because it was something he saw and thought was cool, he had studied and mastered and applied traditional "rules" of composition and then chose to break them as his artistic vision changed and grew. Even in his Cubist pieces, you see elements of traditional composition, so his choice to break an image apart and assemble it in a different way is reinforced by his background in, knowledge of, and application of traditional composition. He followed the "rules" and chose to break them when it served the purpose of conveying his artistic vision and enhancing his images and sculptures.

You also mentioned Chiller in this thread who's presence I miss around here GREATLY. Chiller is another one who CLEARLY understands composition and traditional photographic technique but chooses to be artistically free of those constraints as it suits his vision. But like Picasso, he wouldn't be able to make those choices if he didn't understand the "rules" in the first place.

And speaking of people who's presence I miss around here, you were numbered among them. I wasn't on TPF much at all last Summer and Fall and I missed (and still don't know) what exactly happened to drive so many long-standing members away. I came back to TPF and found that many of the names I was used to seeing and who's posts I looked forward to were no longer posting. You were one of those names.

I'm a bit saddened that you CLEARLY have some issue with me. I'd rather have your respect than your disdain as shown in this quote: "You know if you spend half as much time growing your skills as you did semi-blindly criticizing the artistic choices of others, you might actually learn something." Apparently I don't have that respect from you and you apparently have a very diminished view of my abilities as a photographer and art critic. I'm disappointed by that.

I don't always agree with Derrel, but I always respect his opinion as he's demonstrated time and again that he knows his sh!t. He may be blunt as hell at times, but I thought that you'd respect that as it's one of the things that you called for in the Pact. It's actually one of the things that I respect about him; you know where he stands without any artifice.

I don't always agree with Javier's choice to tilt the camera, but I always respect his work as he's shown time and again that he's a VERY good street photographer. I took Javier's most recent post in this thread as friendly little dig at me because our past interaction has shown mutual respect and I doubt that Javier has suddenly changed.

I didn't always agree with your posts and clearly still don't, but until your condescension towards and belittling of MY artistic views and abilities, I did respect you. I still do to an extent, but my view of you has soured. I just never thought that you'd stoop to the point of throwing insults like that.

So, like the pet-peeves thread, I'm backing out of this one now, too. I regret and apologize for starting threads that have caused people that I respect to turn like this.