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A wee case study
As my world turns, I saw Evan’s post after I had replied, then went back to some editing. But his comment was bugging me a little because while I usually don’t miss such things – and while the only time Evan is generally wrong is when he disagrees with me, the dude is right A L O T. So, I went back to Ron’s image, reread Evan’s comment, scratched my chin and I maybe got a little sidetracked.
Architecturally the dance studio seems rather even but it’s really sort of a symmetry mess. The fact that Ron made it feel so balanced is pretty cool and an interesting case study. With his PMed permission, I scribbled all over his work (and without permission, sunk his logo – sorry Ron, it was distracting me from my piddling).
-- The red lines are at 0 or 90 degrees – square.
-- The light blue lines follow the most important horizontal lines of the room as they actually exist in Ron’s capture.
-- The gold and black lines are obviously the defining perspective lines – the intersection of the gold in particular being interesting.
-- The darker green lines are ancillary but useful nods to the slightly chaotic influence of the bars, stands and speaker.
-- The gray lines are conduit detail on the ceiling.
-- The lime green lines define the current crop and its dimensional center.
-- The brown sliver on the left is the crop matter Ron and I were mentioning… the dotted blue lines are possible crop options – the one on the right potentially creating another sliver next to the window reflection.
-- The yellow dotted line struck me as a good overall recrop once slivers were dealt with and to better center the image on the far wall center “column” (trivial).
Sorry for the length, but this is why I felt some of us would really appreciate studying this shot...
I alluded to this in my original reply but this is a deceptively simple image and it took a lot of skill to pull it off. Ron’s very deft positioning brings as much into symmetry as possible, I think – but the varied angles of the blue lines were complications. The horizontal window lines and intersection of the far wall and the floor are pretty plumb but ceiling line and the horizontal duct work are nicely handled challenges. Converging from left to right, they threaten the composition but Ron pulls it off, anchors us with the windows and the mixed lines become rather benign.
Ron’s choice of camera position – left/right and forward/backward – nail his commitment to what is a very complex composition. I wondered if he should have pulled back a couple of feet to give the dancer more breathing room against her backdrop but she would have become considerably less significant and my sliver-left complaint suggests at this aspect ratio he was already crowding the space he had to work with.
Re: Evan's angle observation: at first I thought that (the ductwork) might be what he was picking up on – which lead me to mapping all this out of curiosity – and because I didn’t agree with him. I assume Ron did some keystone adjustments in post and it all looks great. The only slight matters I found were the left edges of the two left windows.
In image 4 the purple block to the left is the silhouette of the inconsistency on the left most window and the offset purple dotted line is the angle of that inconsistency. In the entire image, the only thing I could find meaningfully out of sorts with Ron’s choice of “plumb” and/or corrections in post was this.
The measure of the discrepancy = 0.48 degrees. Side note that it is CCW.
Now, evidence notwithstanding, I’m not saying Evan is that good, but just in case… Evan... pfffttt. I saw that. After four hours of plotting the darn thing.
Back to Ron and what I thought was particularly well done: his centering of her on the column and between the windows. Obviously, she’s not dimensionally centered, but looking at tonal values in image 5, very much so and if you combine the major tones with the slight lines of detail, IMHO he couldn’t have done much better – and as I said above, just a tad off and it would have been a total miss.
These guys are good.
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