In sailboat racing photography, a horizon job is what you do to thousands of photos with your photo editing software after a day on the water. It's not nearly as glamorous; it's just plain tedious. But it's absolutely necessary, unless you get the horizons right when you take the shots, of course. After nine years on the job, we've gotten pretty good at keeping them straight, which helps to minimize the time we need to spend editing.
A surprisingly large portion of the general public does not notice when horizons are unnaturally crooked in sailing photos. I've seen large, expensively framed photos on display as decor at yacht clubs with crooked horizons, for instance. I've seen major boating brands' marketing departments publish photos with crooked horizons. And if you look at iStock and search "sailing," about one-third of the photos that come up on the first page have crooked horizons. Some people think its artsy. We don't agree.
But it's hard to take photos with straight horizons. You really have to think about it while you take the photo, as it's surprisingly easy to concentrate only on the boat and end up with a 45-degree horizon in the background. Like everything, it takes practice. And until you get better at it, you'll be spending hours on the computer doing the horizon job!
Here's the image above, the way it should be:
