Some time ago, I can’t remember what the actual image was, Flo commented on one of my tilted images, and what she said actually surprised me.
Basically when you tilt an image, you can tilt it in two directions, left and right. This particular image is tilted to the right. Now just imagine it were the opposite, imagine this image tilted to the left. The bicycle would somehow dangle awkwardly, wouldn’t it? Well, Flo’s insight was, that images look much better when the subject does not dangle. Big deal? Surprisingly yes, at least for me. I don’t calculate tilts. I tilt by instinct, and most of all I tilt to get those damn lines into corners. Now, when you look at it, this particular image, like so many others, has roughly an L-shape (inverted L, but anyway). The subject, the bicycle, is cradled into this L, the L holds it, keeps it from dangling. As a result, when we look at the image, everything feels stable and safe.
Take the same image, tilt it the other way, and suddenly the L does not hold the bicycle any more, the result is an awkward feeling of vertigo. This is not always bad, sometimes this feeling of vertigo may be exactly what we want the viewer to feel, but in general it is much more intrusive than its opposite and takes over the whole image. Thus, when you don’t explicitly want that, avoid it. How shall we call that, “Flo’s Law of the Cozy Tilt”?
I have searched my music library for the name “Florence”, and what I came up with is “You’ve Got The Love”, another song from Florence + The Machine’s exceptional 2009 debut album “Lungs”. Even if it does not match the image, can it be bad to hear more of some of the best music of 2009? YouTube has it for you.