Yep, I'll admit it, sometimes we tilt the camera when shooting or the image before printing it. In fact, nearly all of the vertical shots I personally shoot have at least a little bit of camera tilt to help accentuate the action. The image a camera takes is only two dimensional. This will cause the climb or off-camber section to look less intimidating than it is in real life. Using a wide-angle lens also tends to flatten out an obstacle. We try to compensate for these issues with a slight tilt.
Without camera tilt, an image of a difficult climb-such as Potato Salad hill in moab-can look like something you could simply drive up in your grandma's chrysler. But if you saw Potato Salad in person, you would know that is not the case; it's even difficult to walk up or down. The images with people and trees poking out the side of a mountain usually won't run in print. Ultimately, it's our job to make the ordinary look extraordinary and the extraordinary look unbelievable-without looking fake, of course.
First things first, your magazine is the best thing since sliced bread. I look forward to reading it every month as much as anything. But over and over again, you show Jeeps on trails that I would drive in my pickup! Well, I would like to see some real rigs in there. My Jeep was built from the ground up by me and is a very capable rig. and I know those guys are not going to follow me where I go. my rig has seen a lot off tough stuff-Tellico, red river Gorge, Livingston, and others like rattle rock with no winch pulled, thank you. But my Jeep isn't pretty. So show some like mine and leave the others in the driveway for a while. It's a '97 TJ with 5.38-geared high-pinion Dana 60s, 42-inch Swamper TSLs, and it's stretched, four-linked, air-shocked and so on.
Robert D. Brock II
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