If you are looking for distorted architecture, you’ve landed at the right place. You click the super-straight and towering building positioned on the street from a distance to capture its soaring height. But when you looked at the photo, you were shocked to see the tilted and falling road. Architecture photographers and many of us have been through this experience. It is due to distortion. It means it’s not your vision that’s distorted; it’s something else!

Concept of Distortion:

You do not need a camera lens to know about distortion. Remember your road trip and how you looked far out at the road ahead and saw the straight road edges unite at a single point on the horizon? Were the road edges met? Think architectural photography tilts your perspective 90º, and you get a similar phenomenon of vertical distortion.

Distorted Architecture:

Distortion is a result of changing the lens’s perspective and properties. Do we know that closer objects appear to be much larger remember that selfie with the Eiffel tower where you seem to have overgrown the building itself? 

Similarly, when you stand before a vertical building and try to get the whole high-rise in the frame, the base shows much more significance compared to the-top, and the building-looks like it’s falling-back with the edge converging at-the top, a case of converging-verticals.

Distortions Types:

1. Optical distortion: 

It is caused by the lens properties or limitations and occurs as a lack of vignettes, sharpness, chromatic aberrations, and curved lines.

2. Geometric distortion: 

This distortion affects the subject’s shape towards the edges of the frame. For example, a sphere in the center appears round, whereas the same globe appears like an elliptical disk when present near the border. This is commonly seen in interior photos.

3. Perspective distortion 

It arises because of different scales of objects at varying distances from the lens. They are often seen in outdoor architectural photographs such as streets or building exteriors.

4. Keystoning distortion: 

Caused by the perspective, this distortion leads to “converging lines.” For instance, while shooting a tall building, its edge shows up as “collapsed” than “straight-up.”

5. Alignment distortion: 

This occurs when the camera is not leveled horizontally with a reference line of the subject, making the issue appear slanted.

Working with distortion (distorted architecture):

Distortion may prompt unreal or outright weird pictures, so you might believe you should get rid of it more often than not. On the contrary, it can also be used to create strange effects.

Method to get rid of distortion:

1. Change your perspective: 

The best technique is to limit distortion in the field by keeping the plane of the camera and the-subject adjusted, i.e., tilt the camera as little as possible. If your point is high, find a high vantage point and shoot from that point, parallel to the main subject.

2. Use a tilt-shift lens: 

If changing the viewpoint is impossible, choose a point-of-view control lens or a tilt-shift lens. You can keep your camera at your level while shifting your lens-direction to align with all the-points of the subject. This may take some practice-to-master, and such lenses are often-expensive.

3. Software correction: 

Photoshop, Lightroom, Perspective Pilot, and Ptlens are standard software for lens correction. However, too much correction will prompt pixel loss.

Keep in mind; the human eye is used to somewhat of a viewpoint because it’s the natural way we see. That’s why some pictures may look odd if you correct them entirely!

How to use distortion to your advantage?

Distortion can create creative, out-of-league pictures that immediately grab the viewer’s eye! Have you seen the pics of people “holding” the Eiffel-tower in their hands? As a photographer, you can use distortion to create unique personalized moments for your clients! A fish-eye lens can give exciting perspectives of common architectural-subjects. For instance, a scrunched view of the Paris-skyline, with the Eiffel Tower in a-corner and twisted to provide a funny frame!