Unaligned perfectly horizon in masters' or pros' works.

[samstevens]

I presume that Winogrand, or his gallery, still hung framed prints with the top and bottom edges carefully aligned horizontally?

That works in most galleries. Of course, in the Guggenheim, where the viewer is always standing on a bit of a slope, as the walkways wind up and down and around the space, the viewer is never quite level, whether the photos and paintings are or not! :)

 

Then there's the different but, perhaps, related issue with Rothko and the Tate, though it's not a tilt issue as much as a which-way-is-up issue ... LINK

[Glenn McCreery]

Phil - I was off on a tangent here, wondering what tilted photographs hanging on a wall would look like, rather than addressing what Winogrand was after. I will need to think some more about your comment that "It's about the edge and "imaginary border" of the picture’s perceived content..........". I am not sure how this relates to tilted horizons.

[mikemorrell]

There's no special reason why a 'horizon' (wherever in the world) should be horizontal! Many (mountainous, hilly, sloping) horizons just aren't. The only exception that I can think of is a horizon on water. Everyone instinctively knows that the horizons at sea or on large lakes are naturally 'flat'. A horizontal 'water' horizon is always the most natural (but not always compulsory).

 

Maybe, I've missed it so far but 'visual perspective' doesn't seem to have been mentioned so far. In any photo that has some 'perspective' (from whatever viewpoint), horizontal and vertical lines aren't at 90 degrees to each other. Both lines diverge and both converge (ultimately) towards infinity. So for any photo in which the horizontal and vertical lines diverge from 90 degrees, we have to make a choice:

- set the vertical lines at 0 degrees, accepting that the horizontal lines diverge from 90 degrees?

- set the horizontal lines at 90 degrees, knowing that the vertical lines diverge from 0 degrees?

- make some kind of compromise whereby neither horizontal nor vertical lines are exactly at 0/90 degrees but both deviations are (together) 'acceptable' for the photo as a whole

 

I recently took a photo of 3 people sitting around a square table, from a 'viewpoint of perhaps 15-30 degrees from dead centre. It was an interview and there were good reasons why I needed to take photos from this off-center viewpoint. Other 'people photographers' have even greater challenges!

 

So in my photos there were questions of 'perspective'. Even if I'd been able to take photos from 'dead center', the horizontal and vertical lines of the building didn't quite match up in 90-degree angles. With diverging horizontal and vertical lines from perspective, I had to make a choice as described above. In my photos, it seemed to me that the 'verticals' (door frames, windows, vertical pillar) were the most appropriate 'absolutes' in the the photo. I felt that the consequent diverging horizontal lines (table edge, ceiling) were for the viewer easier to accept as the effects of 'perspective'.

 

I could - alternatively - have chosen to make the 'horizontals' absolute at 90 degrees. The consequence would have been that the 'verticals' (door frames, windows, pillars) all would have appeared 'out of kilter' (not at 0 degrees)

 

In summary, I think that 'water' and (vertical) man-made objects are most naturally accepted by viewers as 'absolute' horizontals/verticals. If the verticals of buildings (or people) are at 0 degrees with -as a consequence - that a horizon is not exactly at 90 degrees, then I think that this is generally preferable to the other way around. Of course with the 'Dutch tilt', most people wouldn't notice the perspective anyway:).

 

Mike

[Supriyo]

:)

 

[JDMvW]

sometimes it just seems more right than others:

[invisibleflash]

OP, you doing landscapes? Tripod work and got a crooked shot? Sounds sloppy to me. Crooked pix are OK in street work, but for anal landscapers they look bad.

[samstevens]

anal landscapers

Sounds like a personal groomer for a metrosexual! :cool: