Touch the Sky

I love it, especially now that I've read your narrative.

I had to think about this for awhile to figure out why the bowing out pattern here would occur. I would infer from the image and your lens description that you were shooting much more towards the 17mm end. My experience shooting sky scrapers with the camera pointed upward using a wide angle lens is that the buildings bow inward, not outward.

But if you have a line of lights at the top of the frame to begin with with the camera level to the horizon, then that would be wide apart on the frame relative to their position when they reach the bottom of the frame when the camera is pointing upward. Very much counter intuitive for me, but I think I can see how and why it would happen. I'll have to experiment.

That issue aside, I really like this a lot as an abstract; a though-provoking one at that !

John, it was shot on the wide end of the zoom range (around 17-19mm). In my shorter panning examples, there's much less distortion, but as I panned further up the distortion became more apparently. It also took several attempts to get this right. Just panning by hand alone created some very crooked lines, but I rotated the ballhead so the camera was in a vertical position and the ballhead was nestled in one of the head casing's grooves. This eliminated and horizontal movement during the panning.

As I said, a lot of experimentation!

Max

This is a cool blast of lines and bold colors. I never would have guessed what it really is. Nice creation.

Nice photo, and you get an A+ for creativity!


Kent in SD

Fine technique and great results!
Congrats on the WP!
Sandy

Really cool Max, from the thumbnail I couldn't really tell what it was. But to be honest, as soon as I opened the image I knew it was a skyline as you described. Still, great colors and perfect effect.