Ilse Bing is supposed to be the queen of Leica, additionally a master of angles. As with most of the avant garde photographers of her time, Bing preferred to photograph from an angle and her angle turns out to be oblique. Truth has a slant and one can capture it only at an oblique angle, as she perhaps felt .But the composition of a photograph is not always possible at such a conscious angle .The availability of the angle is mere chance and may be, if you are on the lookout for it, you go get it once in a while.
But what is the beauty of the angle ? The beauty of the angle is not merely in positioning of the camera but in the way the components of the resultant picture are fused together. Thus here there are five men, not three accounting for the moment and they form a sort of a triangle,two of them the base of the triangle, the top one the vertex, the lower one the side. See the way the top one skews his head. The camera is behind the men sitting on the steps but manages to integrate the two men below in the scene , making them all a part of the “three men on the steps scene”.May be , we may include the camerawoman too , who is silently participating in the scene.
Three men on the steps
Cities die regularly from suns
When suns go red in the face.
As cities grow dark and dense,
On steps are found three men
Awaiting a Leica to hide them
In shadows, away from cities.
(Reference is to a classic photograph of Three Men on Steps by the Seine by Ilse Bing)
Metaphors in Photography 