This Composition Was Tough
Nothing in this image is straight. The street, the building, the trash cans. Everything is leaning one way or another. And it’s not me, regardless of whether this shot— which was hand-held and photographed from across the street— was leaning one way or the other, it should have been easily remedied in post. But after about a half an hour of trying to get something lined up right, I realized something: the building is just crooked.
Now, now. No jokes about a loans business being “crooked.” I have never taken a loan from this business, but I’m sure it’s a fine, upstanding company.
But Holy Hell this gave me a headache. If I didn’t like the image so much I would’ve just gave up and moved on. At first, as I said, I thought it was just my crooked head. It does tend to lean a bit sometimes, but I usually shoot buildings with my level display active. Then I thought, ‘well maybe I just shot it at an angle.’ But no, I was sitting on the sidewalk across the street, shooting it dead-on. Lens distortion? A little. But it was shot with my 28-70mm at about 37mm, so while there’s probably a little bit of distortion, nothing that’s going to rock the world.
So then I thought, well it’s gotta be the street. There’s a small grade, and it’s just making everything look like it’s leaning. I mean look at the curb. Look at the trashcans. They both tend to lean in the same direction, enforcing the notion that, yeah, there’s a grade in the road. But then I look at the lamp post. And the window frames. They’re straight. Right? The tree, despite being an organic object, looks like it’s relatively straight.
It doesn’t help that the store front itself has a bit of a concave design to it; the windows actually angle inwards ever-so-slightly. You can tell in the letters, the way the sink away from the overhead lights. It just makes everything look like it’s leaning to-and-fro. And yeah, I said “to-and-fro”. Like a funhouse without the fun. Or the house.
Ultimately I decided on adjusting the image so that the long gray strip along the top of the building is straight. That seemed to result in the best compromise. The street isn’t perfect, the trash cans still look like they’re going to fall over, and even the lamp is leaning just a bit.
ANYWAYS…
The composition itself, despite all the janky angles making it look like its a Willy Wonka factory, was actually very deliberately placed. It took a bit of crawling around and laying on a sidewalk full of pidgeon poop to get the word LOANS completely unobstructed and framed in between the tree and the lamp, while not also being blocked by the plants and the perpendicular hanging sign. Which, now that I think about it, might be the reason why the lamp seems as if it’s leaning backward. Hmm.
Will this go in the list of all-time favorites? Probably not, but even with the jank, there’s still a level of charm here that I can’t shake. I still like the image, for whatever reason. Maybe I’ll go back one day and try again. And I’ll take a level with me. Not for the camera. For those trash cans.