are tilted photos so much "BETTER"

I just took a peak at some of the photos from my friends wedding. out of 20 that i looked at, 14 of them were tilted to about 15-20 degrees.I know it make the presentation a little more fun, but i wasn't expecting so many.
Is this composition something in right now?

pawelgawel wrote in post #15140327
I just took a peak at some of the photos from my friends wedding. out of 20 that i looked at, 14 of them were tilted to about 15-20 degrees.I know it make the presentation a little more fun, but i wasn't expecting so many.
Is this composition something in right now?

Look at your friend. Is her head tilted at 15 degrees? No? Then it's a passing fad. Kind of interesting, once, maybe.

Once in a blue moon, when Hailey's Comet is passing by and ambient air temp is 68.5 degrees.

I saw one image today that looked good. In fact, it was pretty awesome. It was a car image. The rest I see look like crap just because it's so noticeable. There's a pic that was posted a few days ago on Facebook. Family pic. In front of doors. Horizon is off kilter. Looks like absolute crap but yet people like it. Then again, I ran across a photo of a pageant winner the other day, the pro that took her pic made her look like a high priced call girl.

No, it is not. In sports photograph, especially in racing (bike race or car race), tilting is more effective to convey the sense of motion or direction of the motion. For portraits??? Don't know about that.

pawelgawel wrote in post #15140327
I just took a peak at some of the photos from my friends wedding. out of 20 that i looked at, 14 of them were tilted to about 15-20 degrees.I know it make the presentation a little more fun, but i wasn't expecting so many.
Is this composition something in right now?

Quite frankly, I have never seen a single tilted photo that I considered better than 'not tilted' when there is something in the image that conveys what should be level or vertical.

When there is no reference at all to real-world positions in the scene, then tilting the camera (appropriately for the scene) can be a constructive part of obtaining improved composition.

Every once in a great while, a tilted photo is a good idea. As was noted, this would typically be with some action or motion.

As soon as this becomes more common than the Dodo, it wears out its welcome and becomes trite.

Tilting a camera is what untalented photographers do as a substitute for creativity.

That is not to say that every photograph must have a rectangular frame parallel to the ground. The frame can be angled for any number of reasons. I would love to see a staircase lined with frames parallel to the stairway. But if the image is not rendered such that the horizon is level, it simply induces neck aches.

SkipD wrote in post #15140610
When there is no reference at all to real-world positions in the scene, then tilting the camera (appropriately for the scene) can be a constructive part of obtaining improved composition.

That's exactly how i feel about that. If there is no reference point it may give an interesting perspective. Some of the pics were well done... i felt hypnotized by one of them. But majority just made me shake my head.

I watched the photographers. It was a team of 4 young individuals 25-35 years of age. Two were shooting video and two were clicking away.

Im very curious to know what the groom thinks of their stuff. He's a videographer himself...

Curtis N wrote in post #15140822
Tilting a camera is what untalented photographers do as a substitute for creativity.

That's my take on it, too. Some guy with a camera sees a shot like that, and he thinks it looks "cool" because it's "different". So then he takes some pictures that are tilted, too.
Personally, I find the "angled camera" shots like this to be annoying, even if they are otherwise excellent images. Even the published stuff I've seen in ads or whatever, is just annoying and makes me want to turn the page to see other pictures instead - ones that are level.

It's called a "Dutch tilt", and has been around for a while. The Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Dutch_angle

describes its history in cinema, but it's been used in stills as well for a long time. One use was as a trick to disguise keystoning when a shift lens was not available - but they are easily available now, and you can fix it in Photoshop.

It does seem to be a recent fad in wedding photography. I think a lot of people will be very unhappy when they do look at those photos in 25 years' time, because of fads like this and the ridiculous blown highlights that have also been all the rage.

melcat wrote in post #15141701
It does seem to be a recent fad in wedding photography. I think a lot of people will be very unhappy when they do look at those photos in 25 years' time, because of fads like this and the ridiculous blown highlights that have also been all the rage.

It does seem to an annoying fad with some wedding photographers

I attended my nephew's wedding in Bloomington Indiana earlier this year. There was a husband/wife team hired to do the still photography. I noticed the wife doing some crazy things with a Speedlite in the scene facing the camera. Also, they used no flash on their cameras and ALL of the ambient light was coming from above (this was a building with a lot of glass well above the level we were using).

Upon reviewing the images once they were made available, I noticed not only the things I had spotted while they were shooting but almost ALL of the images made by the wife were with the camera tilted to some degree. I think that was her inability to keep the camera level rather than an intentional tilt, but the whole package just looked horrid in my opinion. None of the images presented for purchase appeared to be cleaned up in post-processing. Many of the images could have been made acceptable with a little post-processing work but for some reason they were not.

I never said anything to anyone in the family except my wife, but she agrees with my assessment of the results.

I really hate tilted photos. So many motorsport/car shooters use that style (some almost exclusively) and I can't stand it! Just say NO.

Tilted photos are never a good idea, unless you want to show how drunk you were while shooting...

Tessa wrote in post #15141989
I really hate tilted photos. So many motorsport/car shooters use that style (some almost exclusively)

Because it's easy. To convey an impression of speed you can either - 1.) Shoot with a slow shutter speed, panning the subject to aceive realistic motion blur of the background and the moving parts of the bike/car, or 2.) Shoot with a very high shutter speed to freeze everything, then tilt the image.

Actually, if I were lazy enough to use option 2 then I'd probably just shoot the car while parked, then tilt it.

I don't like the tilt (or "Jaunty angle" as I call it). I never feel it works very well and I'm always reminded of the old Batman TV series with Adam West when the screen tilts every time the villains are shown!