Crooked Horizon Lines Make Your Pictures Worse.

Crooked Horizon Lines

Go outside and take a look at the horizon. What do you see?

Now certainly you could be somewhere in the mountains, or you could be in a dense evergreen forest, but odds are you saw a horizon that was reasonably flat.

Now go look at your pictures you took on your last vacation. How’s the horizon doing?

It’s no shame if your horizon is tilting and toppling all over the place. There’s a lot to keep in mind when setting up your composition, and the horizon can quickly become an afterthought.

But it’s a good idea to keep this in mind when you open your photos on your favourite editing program.

The basic suggestions

Hold this as a general rule:

Lines that are vertical in really life should be vertical in your picture.

And horizontal lines should be horizontal.

Lopsided door frames and leaning buildings look out of place. Unless the tower itself is lopsided (I’m looking at you, Leaning Tower of Pisa).

Straightening pictures is a critical part of the editing workflow. Try as you may, it’s not always possible to nail a perfect horizon line in camera, especially if you are tracking the play in a sports game or chasing bounding wildlife across the savannah in a jeep.

Fortunately, straightening a picture is a piece of cake with any decent photo editing program.

But.

Not all pictures with a tilted horizon are bad.

Exceptions to the Rule

When it’s done for a reason, tilting the angle of a photo can actually  add quite a bit. Generally, it can be used to add drama, action, a sense of movement or direction.

But, it needs to be done with a purpose. When there isn’t a purpose behind it, a tilted background just looks like laziness.

It just doesn’t match what the real world looks life. And so the subjects of your photo appear ready to tumble down into the corner of the picture.

Where this is most noticeable is in the field of landscape photography. A crooked horizon, especially in a picture of a body of water or a flat meadow, stands out like a sore thumb. When the focus of the picture is strictly on recreating reality, having a balanced horizon line is important.

Take a look at the picture below:

It looks like the town is precariously balanced on the edge of the world, and could slide off into the water at any moment.

I might get seasick if I look at it for too long.

How does the picture look, you may wonder, after spending 15 seconds to level out that horizon?

Ahh, that’s much better!

But, with all of that said…

Don’t listen to someone who says “You should never do so-and-so in photography”. There certainly are techniques or practices that I would strongly recommend against, but photography at its core is about creativity and creation.

If you want to experiment with how tilting the camera affects your photography, do it! Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. I’ll leave that to you to decide.

Rules are made to be guidelines.