Hold Your Camera on an Angle
This post belongs to our series of posts on breaking rules of photography to get great images.
One of the ‘rules’ of photography that I talked about very early in the development of Digital Photography School was to do everything you can to keep your images ’straight’ (and your horizons horizontal).
There are a lot of instances when you’d want to follow this rule pretty carefully (like in most landscapes where a horizon should probably be straight) - but breaking it can lead to images with drama, a feeling of energy and action and fun.
The key with breaking this rule is to not to ’slightly break it’ (or you’ll have people wondering if you meant it or not) but to give your wrist a real twist and to break it obviously.
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August 7th, 2007 at 1:29 am
I think it is interesting to see in the example photo that other rules have been followed. The model is vertical and the vanishing point is located near a vertical third division also.
Great post, and I love to see examples of ‘acceptable’ rule breaking. Looking forward to the following posts.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:06 am
In the last wedding I was in the photographer did this on every picture. I remember getting frustrated over him constantly taking pictures with a twist. I’m sure he meant to, obviously, but being an amateur this seemed silly. I have seen his pictures, and while I still think he overdid it, many of them look great.
August 7th, 2007 at 4:20 am
I love doing that with a wide lens, like Sigma 10-20mm, with architecture shots choosing different lines of alignment.. break it all! :)
August 7th, 2007 at 7:42 am
XmasB - yes it can definitely be overdone but makes a nice occasional twist.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:42 am
I do this with almost every shoot. I get great feedback from my subjects, and I don’t even think they realize that it’s the angle that makes the biggest difference.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Once when I was a bridesmaid, the photographer took a close up shot of the bride and I, and tilted the camera slightly to minimize the height difference. Since our faces filled most of the frame, and the background was blurry, you didn’t notice it was slightly off.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Here’s the picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9244400@N03/1048585291/
Actually, the background isn’t blurry, and if you look it’s very obvious it’s tilted. Yet, this is one of my favorite pictures (obviously because of the people). What do you think?
August 10th, 2007 at 12:57 am
I love doing this when something intense happens during evacuation training…
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1318/1061355109_c6f178c4b3.jpg
April 26th, 2008 at 3:29 am
In this pic and a few others I have seen it works but more often than not to me it looks terrible. Gives the feeling of falling over. Especially in full body standing portraits.