Converging verticals - To see, or not to see

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Originally Posted by GrumpyDiver

Neville - I'm going to have to agree with George and Terry on this one.

I use the technique that you outline quite frequently to correct reverse keystoning issues.

I don't think this is the primary issue with this image. The problem, in my view, is that you are trying to make a shot work that simply has too many contraints. Your finished piece reminds me of so many "selfies" that one sees on the net; self portraits with a wide angle lens that distort the persons face significantly. Increasing sharpness, dodging and burning and other similar techniques might improve the technical issues with the image, but the basic compositional choices the person made are simply impossible to correct.

Your shooting constrictions, compositional choices (wanting to show two faces), equipment constraints, etc are going to leave you with a somewhat awkward representation of the building. Shooting with a PC lens or shooting from the second floor of a building across the street will help with the reverse keystone distortion, but shooting with an ultra-wide angle lens and shooting so that the one corner of the building is close to the lens is going to result in a bit of a funny looking image.

Here it becomes personal taste. So long as you are happy with the image; great! But be prepared with other viewers not sharing your view. Loosing up on some of the constraints (for example doing a straight on shot) and you are more likely to get a compelling image.

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Totally agree. The building itself is distorted in that it is not square at the near corner and that's largely why I wanted to record it. A little like Mercator in the 16th. century, challenged to map 'accurately' a three dimensional form which is not possible, it's a matter of choosing those elements of distortion that work best. Of course the (self imposed) brief here is to reach something that's artistically satisfying, rather than mathematically accurate. And as you state, it's a matter of personal taste.

Dealing with this image has been an interesting journey in post processing.

This lesson is starting to sink in my hard coconut...:eek: and it is becoming dangerous to the point of me being scared to be a good photographer or should I say, software manipulated images corrector...very addicting.:o :D Now I am off tomorrow morning to take more images of buildings locally so I can learn to correct them. Thank you for your post. I'll get there...

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Originally Posted by IzzieK

This lesson is starting to sink in my hard coconut...:eek: and it is becoming dangerous to the point of me being scared to be a good photographer or should I say, software manipulated images corrector...very addicting.:o :D Now I am off tomorrow morning to take more images of buildings locally so I can learn to correct them. Thank you for your post. I'll get there...

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Go, get 'em, Izzie.