I originally took this photograph trying to keep all lines as horizontal as possible. This is how I found out that the iPhone’s camera has an amount of distortion. That is, if I tried straightening the photograph with respect to one side, the other side gets crooked. So that means none of the seemingly straight lines were actually straight.
Anyway, I gave up trying to straighten and rotated the image so it was all diagonal lines. Tons of photography books, blogs, and tutorials say that lines lead the eye quite strongly. My original intention was to make this photograph have stability and order with the horizontal lines. As noted above, that was a bit of a flop. So I turned those lines diagonal. What do diagonal lines mean, then?
In contrast to the way that horizontal and vertical lines add stability and order, diagonal lines are more dynamic and add “movement” to photographs. It feels like the photograph is leading the eye towards somewhere. In my case, nowhere really. I just found the pattern striking.
Notes:
Taken with iPhone 4.
Edited with Adobe Photoshop Express for iPhone.
Edited with Best Camera App for iPhone.
It may indeed be true that your iphone’s camera is distorted . . . but to be sure you would have to be absolutely sure that you were holding the focal-plane perfectly parallel with the surface you were photographing. Even the slightest angle in any direction could also cause the distortion you were seeing. =)