level horizon...

[MidwestBeachBum]

I need help on regarding composing a shot when there are uneven areas everywhere. I wanted to use an old stone building as a backdrop for a motorcyclye shoot I am doing for some friends. The building sits on a sloping hill, with uneven ground as a foreground too...the horizon is visible in the background. What should be my level point? A level horizon gave me a slanted roof, a level roof gave me a slanted horizon...moving back and/or zooming in or out gave be slanted/level foreground with slanted/level roof respectfully. Then, I had to consider whether or not the bikes would be level, too... None of them looked good to me so I gave up, deleted all of them and tried to find a different location for my background! Any advice is appreciated!

[TheMoons678]

I think I would make sure the closest structures are level and the background can be secondary. It'd be nice if you had a sample picture.

But if you cant find a level that works, try a new perspective


google searched "uneven horizon" and found this off flickr

[dlambert]

I think you're going to have to make a judgement call on the most dominant natural horizontal (or vertical) line, and then either line that up correctly or purposefully cant the image one way or the other. To me, a shot that's off-level by less than ten degrees or so looks like a mistake, but if it's off-level by more than that, it looks like it was intentional.

[Doug Sundseth]

I'd recommend using the verticals rather than trying to find horizontals. Buildings that aren't vertical look way stranger than land that isn't horizontal.

Note that this gets difficult if you have perspective distortion. In that case, I'd recommend making a dominant vertical close to the center of the frame be vertical. If there isn't one of those, you might need to interpolate between tilted "verticals" on either side of the center.

[MidwestBeachBum]

hmm....hadnt considered the "vertical" aspect of things. I also was just doing test shot of the location. I know my subjects (the motorcycles) will have ot be level. I think I'll go back out there today and do a few more shots taking all the above comments into consideration.....will post the results later! thanks..

[Krusty79]

I would second the idea of getting the vertical lines vertical. It's pretty noticeable if a building or power pole is leaning.

I'm going to disagree with TheMoons idea of using the Dutch angle. If you had a strong image to begin with, you wouldn't need to rotate it.

Another thing to try is to apply a grid to your image using your image editing software. That should at least tell you what the "true" horizon line looks like.

I do agree that sometimes an image will not look quite level no matter what you do. I would also make sure barrel or pincushion distortion is not causing this problem.

[GlynT]

I have a slightly different opinion on this one... I agree that it is important to get the vertical lines correct but I would tend to adjust those in PS afterwards because they will normally need adjusting relative to each other.... (due to perspective, lens distortion etc...)

I think the most important line is the horizon. A building that is sloping is completely natural but the horizon is always straight in our minds-eye....