Cityscapes/Urban

Yes, this telephone pole…

October 23, 2009
Leaning Telephone Pole
Leaning Telephone Pole

..  does lean to the left? Who noticed it?

I was a visitor to this neighborhood when I saw this scene and the first thing I noticed was the lean of the pole. Heavy telephone lines pull on the pole unceasingly. However, I wonder, if you live near this telephone pole or drive by every day to work, would you  notice it leans? All of us can admit we daily over look the common everyday scenes. Just a question.

This also reminds me of a tendency I have to tilt my horizons. Not sure why I do it but a fellow photographer picked up on that a few years back. I still struggle with it every once in a while. I have the grid patterns turned on in my view finder to help.  Following the same question as in yesterdays post, do you think therapy would help?

Retired. Having fun with photography. Journal daily. Meditate daily. Learning haiku/poetry. Have a love for fountain pens.

10 Comments

  • QPB

    October 23, 2009 at 7:18 am

    Talk about synchonicity, I have two windows open on the computer–the blogs I’m reading and a photography forum. I was just reading someone’s thread, “I confess, I’m a tilted photographer”. Lol–one of the responses was as follows:
    “I have been a crooked shooter since day one. Years ago I had a mentor. One of the first things he pointed out to me is that my left hand is weak and I tend to drop the left side of my camera while shooting. I have learned to use the focus points to help align the images, but if I am in a hurry or shoot many at a time, the left side will steadily drop as I shoot. I have friends with the same problem on the right side. Not a whole lot you can do about it.. just pay attention while you shoot and rotate as needed after. If you are aware of it, you will have a better chance to correct it.” (CindiP)

    As for therapy, I will stay with my original opinion–who wants to be “normal”? 🙂

  • Earl

    October 23, 2009 at 7:29 am

    Big time tilter here also. I use the grids on my viewfinder but I still on occasion tilt my photos. I have to keep mentally reminding myself to check the horizon. But then as Mary Ann said, “Who wants to be normal”…or perhaps tilted is normal? 😉

  • Paul

    October 23, 2009 at 9:01 am

    I just developed some film that I shot yesterday. There were some that had horizon lines so crooked that I thought: Dang! Was I even looking through the viewfinder, or does the ocean really tilt like that? 🙂 No, my friend, you are certainly not alone.

    Some days it’s so bad that I would have probably taken this photo and the telephone pole would have looked straight and I would have wondered what was wrong with the building!

  • Monte Stevens

    October 23, 2009 at 11:52 am

    @Paul: Glad to know I’m not alone. Your last comment about the leaning building rather than the pole, reminded me of an image taken in San Francisco where where the street was level and the houses were leaning.

    @Earl: You too? Thanks Earl, because of your post I learned a new photography term today: tilter. I’m gonna use that one! Where is there a rule in photography stating we need the horizon to be horizontal?

  • Anita Jesse

    October 23, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    If you find a therapist who can take care of the tendency to tilt horizons, please sign me up! I’m abnomoral enough without the crooked horizon business.

    I love scenes where everthing is crooked and you get dizzy trying to figure out how to make it look “normal”.

  • Ray Ketcham

    October 23, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    I know exactly what you mean about the tilting horizons, but then I also limp when I walk so the world is sorta tilted for me anyway. Makes that normal doesn’t it? Maybe you are just ahead of the curve, if this is the case it would just confuse a therapist so no reason to frustrate them.

  • Monte Stevens

    October 23, 2009 at 6:07 pm

    @Anita: If I do find a therapist, I’ll let you know. I also don’t want to over compensate and go to the other extreme and be a right sided tilter.

    @Ray: The last thing I want to do is confuse a therapist.

  • Dave W.

    October 24, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    Don’t worry Monte, I think more photographers suffer from tilt that any other quirk. I think it proves a very important point – that we are so focused on our subject, that we don’t get distracted by some of the other things.

    I have many wildlife images with slightly tilted horizons, but I use the theory “make it pop”. If you isolate your subject and make it pop to the viewer, they’ll never notice the tilted horizon!