by ChrisSheppard, Mashonaland Photographic Society
A really good image can be reduced to a mediocre one if the horizon is not level. Why do I say this? Those of us who suffer from sea sickness will know that queasy feeling you have as the boat lurches from side to side and the sea appears to roll around the boat. A similar thing happens when we lookat something that “just doesn’t feel right,” and often it is subliminal. Our subconscious sees an imbalance, it registers as “wrong,” and the feeling will not leave you.
As we take a picture with our chosen method, be it a DSLR or a cell phone, we often are so focussed on the subject we forget the basics like keeping the horizon straight and level.
In a more sophisticated camera you can activate gridlines in the viewfinder to help you keep things aligned. On a cell phone you may have to rely in the edge of the frame to line up with thetreeline or seascape as you snap away.
Certainly some images lend themselves to very slanted views. One example would be pictures in the more dramatic fashionmagazines, where a model is shown wearing a new outfit with the horizon at an exaggerated slant – this adds impact to the advert if done correctly. But this is not often the case.
Let’s take an example of someone water skiing. It is an exciting sport with fast boats and water spraying everywhere, and the added attraction of a possible bail-out with the skier tumbling, or “faceplanting” into the water in a huge explosion of sparkling droplets. There is huge potential for a dynamic andinteresting shot.
Water that you ski on does not flow either up or down hill – it is level and our senses know that. If the skier appears to be riding up the lake level it is not right. Riding the wake is one thing, but not a mountain of water.
So as you sit on the back of the boat watching the action, camera or cell phone in hand, train yourself to keep the horizon straight as you snap away hoping for a remarkable shot.
If you are carried away by the action, and your horizon ends upwith a slight slope, you can fix the problem of the horizon level with several computer programmes or by editing the image in camera so that when the image is shared it looks professional.