There is a famous location in Brooklyn, on Washington Street in DUMBO, where the Manhattan Bridge tower frames the Empire States Building. It isn’t quite Leaning Tower of Pisa, but there are enough tourists posing for photographs to slow car traffic and produce a curious scene when viewed from above:
The view of skyscraper framed by bridge is great, and worthy of inspiring many pilgrimages to the site. Last week I passed through the area and took photos of the juxtaposed landmarks from a few different distances:
Viewed from above, the relative distances between skyscraper, bridge tower and camera (position of images ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’) illustrate how the background figure of the Empire State Building can overtake the foreground Manhattan Bridge tower. The further I walked from the bridge, the more closely related each figure (building, bridge) came to resemble their actual heights.
For those interested in the term ‘lens compression’ see this link for an explanation on why it has everything to do with camera position and nothing to do with using (from a static position) a zoom lens. And what happens when you move a camera back while zooming in (or vice versa, á la Jaws)? See The Evolution of the Zoom Dolly article (with companion YouTube montage).
Adam Achrati 
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