day 6 - golden triangle

find a golden triangle composition somewhere in the apartment.

on this one i broke one of my big rules. i usually keep the horizon level. i nearly always get annoyed with people who tilt their camera for no reason. but i was looking for a golden triangle type composition. a golden triangle is a less-well-known cousin to the golden ratio and golden spiral. you take your canvas, and put a diagonal line in from corner to the opposite corner. then pick one of the two remaining corners, and draw a line from there to form a 90 degree angle to the first line. where the 90 degree angle is becomes a very strong focal point for the image.

another composition rule being broken: don't create lines that point to corners. the viewer's eye will travel right off your image. 

with this picture i wanted there to be no mistaking my intentions to make a golden triangle composition. i figured the best way to do that would be to tilt the camera, making the top of the couch into a line from corner to corner, and then have the guitar create the other line, up to the upper right hand corner.

i think the composition is strong enough that you almost forget the tilted horizon. it does have a certain held energy. looking at the picture everything feels almost locked into place.

strobist information: the camera is a nikon d60, iso 100 - 1/100th of a second @ f5.6 --- there is a sb-28 camera right at 1/4 power, pointed mostly into the ceiling, partly toward the guitar. there is another sb-28 camera left at 1/8th power, gridded and pointed directly at the guitar.

tweaky stuff - i ran this through one of kevin kubota's photoshop actions -- b/w satin #2, i think. put a slight vignette on it (most of the shadows are from the lighting) and that's that. i had a sort of a warmed-up-black and white idea in my head while setting up the shot, and this treatment got me pretty close to what i had in mind.

diagram:

From tim's 365 project