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Considerations

Posted by
MadScientist (Düsseldorf, Germany) on 2 January 2012 in Architecture.

Some images don't give you any peace. I've taken this photo several years ago with my wide angle lens, capturing the whole church - St Victor's (Xanten) massive westwork - and a lot of its surroundings. My point of view was rather good, but that whole image was distorted in a way it was almost unusable. Yes, the converging lines. Today I would do different: I wouldn't use my wide angle lens (it's better for ceiling shots), but I would take a lot of photos with my normal lens and later stitch them together with some software. I'll try this next time, but until then this is my second best solution: omit the spires and carefully use that function where you draw a rectangle and then warp it. The conversion to B/W wasn't just for aesthetic reasons: by warping that aforementioned rectangle the upper part of the image is spread apart and filled with computed values. That doesn't look too awful, but the artefacts are notable. B/W makes it look a bit better.

Ronnie 2¢ from Atlantic Shores, United Kingdom

With equipment/composition dilemmas like this I think we need to be even more brutal and slice off even the hint of the spires - what we do not see, we will not miss and it becomes a more satisfying image.

2 Jan 2012 6:15am

@Ronnie 2¢: I think you are right. I'm sometimes a bit too anxious when it comes to cropping.

JoeB from Brampton, Canada

I would try stitching, what happens if you move back ? Happy New Year.

2 Jan 2012 3:27pm

@JoeB: Happy New Year, Joe! Hope everything is well! I was already at the very end of the square in front of that church. I've taken the complete church (including steeples), but the distortion was just too strong.

Shaahin Bahremand from Tehran, Iran

das ist sehr gut !
ausgezeichnet :)

2 Jan 2012 4:01pm

@Shaahin Bahremand: Vielen Dank!

omid from mashhad, Iran

very nice!!!

2 Jan 2012 4:35pm

@omid: Many thanks!