This image offers a good example of barrel distortion. Note how the doors on either end bend towards the middle of the picture, and how the sidewalk seems to curve. Actually, the doors stand perpendicular to the ground, and the sidewalk is really straight. To some, this distortion may be a flaw. There are expensive wideangle lenses that do not exhibit such barrel distortion, but not for cameras such as the one I use. I regard such mild barrel distortion as an asset, a form of emphasis. The appearance of this crumbling building in Yangon’s Indian Quarter is subtly altered. It appears to stretch, to be larger than it actually is. Since there is only one layer in this image, the illusion of the curved street serves to imply depth. The only time that barrel distortion is distracting is when a human face or body is bent or stretched out of proportion. Such a problem does not exist here. The three men, wearing longyi sarongs, the Burmese national costume for both genders, are not distorted because of their central position in the frame. Only the information towards the edges of a wideangle image is subject to such bending. These men await customers in front of their paint store, while their own antiquated building, which has seen empires rise and fall in old Rangoon, incongruously very much needs the product they sell.