The Tilted Horizon

     The number of pitfalls that can besiege a landscape photographer is seemingly endless, especially for beginners.  One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing a photograph with an obviously tilted horizon.  Without a doubt it is one of the most common mistakes I see.   This is mind boggling to me because it is also the easiest mistake to fix.  Even the most rudimentary of photo processing software has the ability to rotate a picture any degree and then crop it.  And yet time and time again I see pictures by talented and experienced photographers with tilted horizons.
     The best way to avoid a tilted horizon is to use a bubble level.  Many tripods and tripod heads come with a bubble level built in so you can be certain you are level.  You can also buy a small bubble level and attach it to your camera.  More recently, some of the top of the line DSLR's come with a simulated bubble level inside the viewfinder.  This is especially useful if you are not shooting with a tripod.  
     If you do make this mistake don't fret, the good news is that it can easily be corrected.  Simply rotate the image the appropriate amount and then crop.  Alternatively, much of the software out there has automated leveling tools.  The one downside is that you will lose a bit of the image in the cropping process.  Still, this is much preferable to seeing a titled horizon.

Uh oh, tilted horizon.  Oops!

Rotate until horizon is level...

Crop, and voila

The Digital Darkroom

Before and after

This image is a good example of how the evolution of photo processing software can rescue a poorly executed photograph.  It was also a lesson to me on the limitations of film (and even digital sensors).  I made this photo ten years ago when I was still shooting film.  The scene presented a challenging exposure, with a very bright sky and relatively dark foreground.  Film and digital sensors are unable to record the range of contrast that the human eye can detect.  Consequently, in scenes with a high contrast range the bright areas tend to be blown out while the shaded areas are simply black, neither with any discernible detail.  This is a very common problem in landscape photography, as skies are often much brighter than the foreground.  In the days before digital the traditional way of dealing with this was to use a graduated neutral density filter.  This filter darkens the sky somewhat while leaving the darker foreground as is, thereby reducing the range of contrast in the scene.  These days HDR (high dynamic range, to be discussed in a future blog) has become the popular way of solving this problem.  At the time I took this photo I didn't recognize the need for such a filter, and as a result my image had an overly bright sky with a too dark foreground.  My joy at recording a beautiful scene turned to frustration when I got my film back the next day and realized my mistake.  However, now that I've become somewhat proficient in Photoshop I was able to "fix" the image, ten years after the fact.  I scanned the slide to produce a digital image and then edited the file in Photoshop.  The result is an image that reflects what the scene truly looked like.

Come one, come all...

At the behest of several friends, family members, acquaintances, ex-cons, plumbers, I’ve decided to finally start a blog.  People want to know you, they would tell me. Really?  Me?  Until now I have been reluctant to do so, for three reasons.  First, does anyone actually read blogs?  I’ve been told that some people do.  And I’ve read that some people actually make a living out of writing blogs, something that bewilders me to no end.  Second, do I really have anything to say?  Why of course I don’t!  Until now I have preferred to let my photos speak for me.  But it occurred to me that I could offer photography tips as well as narrative on select images.  Some of my photos may even have an interesting story behind them, at least to maybe one percent of you.  And finally, do I want to spend a chunk of time each week doing something that may ultimately make little or no difference?  This whole social media thing can quickly get out of hand.  I already have a website and a Facebook page to which to tend, do I really want to add blogging to that?  Don’t I have something better to do?  But after careful consideration I realized that I really don’t have anything better to do, hence the decision to go forth and blog.

So there you have it, my first blog.  I promise that future blogs will be more informative with less tripe.  And as always I am open to comments and suggestions, provided they are all full of praise.