Why are tilts so bad?

[KmH]

And - the right times are few, and far between.

 

[gsgary]

And - the right times are few, and far between.

I don't do it very often but sometimes it works, here i was trying to echo the lines of the armco

 

[nick_cool]

Here there are some of mine, I am very please considering they were taken with a lens made by me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nick_cool2000/5962071183/in/set-72157627250905996/



http://www.flickr.com/photos/nick_cool2000/5962071183/in/set-72157627250905996/

 

[2WheelPhoto]

Tilting reminds me of selective coloring and HDR.

Occasionally its done in good taste to add to a photo, but most of the time its only worthy of a quick FaceBook post at best.

 

[manaheim]

(gary- that's an awesome example of effective use of tilt... it's an alarming, yet cool, shot! )

This topic is very near and dear to my heart. I use tilts periodically... sometimes to show movement, sometimes to break something out of the rules enough to make the viewer look at it differently, and sometimes just to "paint".

See, the world around us is full of all these fascinating colors and patterns, and if you just shoot a straight-up level shot of them, it just doesn't carry it through to the viewer the way it should. I think it's jusf because it's such a small visualization of a larger scene, and because so much is lost to simply just not being there. For me, tilting is a way to break the viewer out of the stagnant view and sort of drag them through the picture to see the things I want them to see. When I do this, I'm usually not looking at the subject anymore so much as looking how all the different lines and colors interplay to make a picture that is something other or something different than what it really is.

For example...

Or the shot I am probably most infamous for tilting...

I have other examples that were more about motion and such, but really most of mine are about using the elements of the scene to paint a pattern or design of some sort that I think really brings out something essential in the feeling I had when I was looking at the scene at the time.

But these are all very intentional. The worst kind of tilt is one that was just sloppy camera work or not taking the time and care to straighten a horizon by 1-2 degrees.

 

[Dmitri]

Tilting is fine. Don't listen to the naysayers. Its been used forever, and will continue to be used (sometimes good, sometimes bad). It's also called a Dutch Angle.

Dutch angle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia