Let's Get This Straight

Have you ever looked at a real estate photo and thought, 'that seems to be a great looking room but something's wrong with it?'  Maybe you even felt a bit sea sick.

Just so you can see what I'm talking about, take a look at this photo.  (I purposely used an image with straight verticals and made them crooked.)

An image with crooked verticals

Images with crooked verticals send a message that something's wrong.  We live in a world where a safe and sound home has straight up and down walls!! You may say  'so what?  They'll figure out it's just the photograph,'  but you may have also planted in the viewer's subconscious  that the house has something wrong with it.

Now take a look at the same image, but this time with straight verticals.  Which one is easier to look at?

How do  verticals get crooked?  Sometimes it happens because the camera isn't lined up correctly.  Tilting the camera down, up, or to the side can greatly effect the outcome of your image.  Other times  a wide angle lens introduces barrel distortion  and you may get some strange looking lines at the edges of your photos.

How do you avoid crooked lines?  The main prevention is making sure you take the time to set up your shot with all the walls vertical.   Once you start using a wide angle lens this can become more of a challenge.  Sometimes there's nothing but image editing software to fix the problem.