Alley in Seattle. You have to wonder what happens to this city when an earthquake hits. Photoshopped. Click to embiggen.




  1. Improbus says:

    It fall down. Go boom. It’s just a matter of time. The only thing I have to worry about is tornadoes … well, not really, I don’t live in a trailer park. I have lived in the mid-west all my life and the only place I have seen a tornado is television.

  2. Lou says:

    If you get caught in a quake downtown. It’s 50/50 weather you are going home that day.

  3. hhopper says:

    Photoshopped?

  4. Luc says:

    $ exiftool seattle2010.jpg

    Make: OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP.
    Camera Model Name: E-520
    Focal Length: 33.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 66.0 mm)
    Exposure Time: 1/80
    F Number: 5.0
    ISO: 100
    Flash: Auto, Did not fire
    Lens: OLYMPUS 14-45mm Lens
    Date/Time Original: 2010:04:12 13:29:52
    Software: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows
    Framing: Crooked As Usual (Adobe Photoshop notwithstanding)

  5. hhopper says:

    Oh… enhanced.

  6. Counterweight says:

    “You have to wonder what happens to this city when an earthquake hits.”

    Millions of dollars of instant improvements.

  7. #5..crooked? This time I leveled it based on multiple reference points. With all those walls bending every which way and a crooked alley…I’d like to see you do better. The original is there for you to play with.

  8. Luc says:

    @8 Sorry, John, but that is definitely something that you (and most amateur photographers) need to work on. The only thing that looks straight to me in that picture is the man, and people are a bad reference for decrooking pictures. Short of the horizon, the ocean, or any body of water, walls are usually the next best thing. Most of the walls/buildings are leaning to the left here. Look at that building with big glassy windows in the background, place a ruler against that white-ish column, it’s obviously crooked.

    The two walls closer to the camera don’t look quite as crooked, but they do look warped. Many lenses do that, my camera does that all the time. I usually give the zoom lever a twitch to apply a little bit of zoom and lose the typical warping of the minimum focal length. I lose a little bit of width, but I also get rid of the warping. Warping disguises crookedness.

    Unless, of course, those buildings are in fact crooked. My home town has plenty of beachfront crooked buildings. Are they? Are all those buildings in your picture actually crooked?

  9. CrankyGeeksFan says:

    The ground underneath the buildings will turn into quicksand probably similar to the early 20th century Great San Francisco earthquake.

    Example: Fill a jar half way with water. Pour sand into the jar until top of sand looks solid. Place jar on the hood of a car. Pound fists near the jar to simulate an earthquake. The water will rise up through the soil and “drown” any structures there.

  10. bobbo, the evangelical anti-theist and junior cadet says:

    #9–Luc==you say: “The only thing that looks straight to me in that picture is the man, and people are a bad reference for decrooking pictures.” /// So, you claim the man is actually walking off perpendicular? I put a weighted string across my perpendicular screen and found most of the buildings to be on the vertical while some were off.

    I believe its as good as could be achieved with normal equipment.

    Your advice while generally true, doesn’t apply here.

  11. RSweeney says:

    Why worry? It’s not like there’s a volcano next to it.

    Oh wait.

  12. Luc says:

    Bobbo, the man is walking. Our vertical axis swings when we walk. Besides, he seems to be walking on slope-like ground. And he’s carrying some weight on one of his shoulders, that is likely to affect his posture, now this way then the other way.

    I tried to fix the picture using the big, modern buildiing in the background as the main reference. Since it’s modern, I consider it more reliable than the others.

    It works fairly well, all the walls on the right half of the picture seem to agree. The whole picture “feels” better. But then the building in the middle gets crooked, and definitely the walls on the left look crooked/warped. I think the lens is causing distortions in John’s picture.

    Look at me making the same mistake. I put too much emphasis on the walls on the left, so the city in the horizon turned out crooked. If I had leveled the picture based on the horizon, the big wall on the left would be leaning too much to the right. But it’s not leaning, it’s warped. I wasn’t careful about the focal length, so the lens distorted the image.

  13. green says:

    Luv alleyways. This one is especially grimy and worn. I can smell it.

  14. Santa Maria says:

    Seattle is not near or on any active faults… its not San Francisco.. why all the scare mongering?

    Sure there might be a 2.1M quake every 100 years.. but that ain’t gonna shake anything.

  15. bill says:

    Forget Seattle! how about San Francisco? There are plenty of structures just like these in SF still! Just don’t park next to a brick wall with a large masonry overhang at the top of the building!

    Remember to walk down the center of the alley!

  16. Still Right says:

    Is the metadata available if I were to look at this in Lightroom, for example?

  17. Still Right says:

    Nevermind. I see the answer is yes.

  18. bobbo, the law is an ass===get on and RIDE!!!! says:

    #13–Luc==thanks for the extra work. In the OP, that modern building is also on the vertical==do you agree?

    So, using a range of standard lenses, taking close ups of tall buildings will introduce a lens convergence that unavoidably will cause the left and right tall subjects to “bend in.” Straighten one side out, and the other side will go off vertical the opposite direction. Playing with the zoom setting can minimize this distortion but then you wind up not having the picture (subject matter, framing, or composition) that you wanted.

    I liked your own picture, and isn’t that the primary thing?

  19. bobbo, to the left of Obama says:

    #19–I see you post of social issues in the same manner that Alfie posts on political matters.

    You should be warned and banned in like manner.



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