Distortion

Today’s Challenge: Distortion

For today The Cosmic Photo Challenge by Dale Cooper is “Distortion“.

Distortion, as Dale points out can come in many forms. I will start with one Dale mentioned – as when a scene is seen through a window made of highly distorting glass as is common on shower doors. It can be pictorially interesting. Here the distortion is made intentionally in post-processing. The effect is intentionally mild to keep it impactful.

Another type of distortion is lens flaws such as pincushion or barrel distortion. My favorite zoom lens goes from one to the other as the focal length is adjusted. It is mild, almost unnoticeable. To illustrate such lens distortion here is an intentional post-processing effect.

There also can be distortion within the camera as I illustrate here is an exaggerated crop.

My pet peeve, however, is perspective distortion created by the optics – the image is geometrically true, but it is not as our eyes perceive the scene. Our brain instinctively corrects and we see buildings with true verticals, but the camera shows them “falling in” on themselves. This is especially true with wide-angle lenses.

There are two ways to correct such distortion. It can be done in post-processing or when taking the photo – just keep the camera level, that is with the horizon centered. There will be no perspective distortion, even with the widest lens – although there may be fish-eye distortion – usually very mild.

Well, one of these images I like, as you can see from my featured image.

And now for some playful distortion. When you get too close to someone with a wide-angle lens this can happen:

No, I did not do this to a friend. This was done with a distortion tool in PaintShop Pro. Here are three others of this AI image, including a “gently real” one.