Fourth Post: Historic Influences
who / where / when: Irving Underhill, New York City, 1908.
what: I think the focal point is the two tall buildings on the right. He apparently tilted the lens plane to get the lines of those buildings to be vertical, although, this caused the small buildings on the left to look a little distorted. He uses rule of thirds in this putting the two buildings way off to the side, but they definitely catch your attention right away. I really like that he made those buildings completely vertical and although it looks a little weird that the other buildings are slanted, it points your focus even more towards the right.
why: Underhill was hired to document the construction of this area. This photo and his others are mainly documentation of New York City architecture. Similar to Abbott, he documented the city scape of many buildings that are now long gone. I think the main “why” for most architecture photographers is documentation.
how: This photo was obviously a film shot. The scene was not set up, that was part of the point of Underhill’s photography. He used a field camera to move the lens and/or film to make the lines of the right buildings vertical, but this did cause the lines of the left buildings to be slightly slanted.