Hi.In this video, I show you how you can take your photography to the next level by using
straight lines.
Hi. I’m Adam and welcome to First Man Photography the channel that will help you take your photography
to the next level.
If you haven't done so already, head over to firstmanphotography.com, fill in your details
to join the email list and I’ll send you a free copy of the ebook on how to capture
perfect exposure every time.
Okay, let's get into this.
Since I started doing my video critiques, a recurring theme has been to keep straight
lines.
This can be anything from buildings to portraits.
It is especially important in landscape photography to get your horizons straight.
Why is this important you ask?
Well, pretty much everything we perceive is in straight lines.
Our eyes are in a straight line, buildings have straight lines, trees, the horizon is
always a straight line when you look at it and even when you're tilting your head your
brain will force you to perceive that as straight line.
So when you look at a picture that doesn't have straight lines it will often appear off,
for some reason, and it won't look quite right.
A wonky horizon, a diagonal building, or still water on a hill, all go against our normal
perceptions of things.
A photograph will always be more pleasing when the lines are straight.
Clearly, a curve can be beautiful as well and, sometimes, photographers will shoot things
at a angle intentionally but at all other times straight lines are best.
Happily, this is very easy to solve, both at the time shooting and in post processing,
if things have gone a little askew.
It happens to the best of us.
Firstly, when you look through the viewfinder, notice your scene and think about shooting
straight lines.
Look at the background, the tops and bottoms and sides of the frame and this will make
the vast majority of your images straight.
The camera also has controls or features, which will help you keep your camera straight,
like this level here or you can switch on live view and bring up the guide like the
rule of thirds guide.
That will help you to keep you writing straight if you are shooting a landscape or something
like that.
Failing that, you can get a little spirit level that looks a bit like this you.
Just slide into the hot shoe on your camera, keep bubble between the lines and then you
know your image will be straight.
When you’re left having to sort things out in post processing, Lightroom has a really
powerful feature to get your lines straight and it’s also incredibly easy to use.
So, if we get into the laptop here and we start looking at an image like this.
As you can see, that is pretty awful and that horizon is so much lower on the left-hand
side of the image as it disappears behind the cliffs there.
So very easy to sort out.
You’re just going to go into the Develop module, which I’m already in, so make sure
you hit D. Then you’re just going to hit R and that will bring up our Crop tool.
There’s two ways to do it then.
You can either get your little curved arrows on the edge like that and then just drag the
image until you get the lines straightened up against the guide there.
That’s not quite accurate though, although, you can get pretty good results.
I’m going to undo that and then show you the way that I much prefer.
So, again, just hit R to bring up the Crop tool and then you’re going to go to the
Straightening tool which just is just to left of the Angle button.
Click that to bring up the Straightening tool and then all you need to do is draw the line
that you want to be straighter.
In this case, the horizon at the end of the the sea.
So, I’m going to start here and the further you can go across the image the more accurate
you can be.
But it would also work if I drew a small line like that.
In this case, I can see a bit more of the horizon.
I’m going to drag it across like that and then just release and it will straighten my
image much more accurately.
There you have the final image, much nicer, much more natural feeling.
As you can see it’s improved the image no end and it has, actually, I think, to the
next level.
If you employ these techniques, your images will instantly stand out as having a much
more professional and polished look.
I’d love to hear what you think.
I’ve got a feeling some people may disagree with me on this one.
Let me know what you think down in the comments and we can get into, hopefully, a bit of an
interesting discussion.
Also, please do subscribe to the channel, if you haven't done so already.
There’s videos going up every Wednesday and every Sunday and I will see you on another
video very soon.
I'm Adam.
This is First Man Photography…
Out!!!