Street photography, like a batter hitting a ball

I often post photographs to Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community. Occasionally I’ll make a remark or two. Like this one:

I never know what I've shot until I get it out of the camera and onto the computer, where I can see it.

NEVER.

Steve Engle replied:

I always imagine that a photographer with talent and experience is a bit like a batter who kind of reads the seams and velocity on a pitch, and then reflexes take over. And sometimes it's a miss or a foul ball, and sometimes they watch a good pitch go past them, and sometimes they hit it right on the nose. And they keep working on their chops.

I replied back:

Excellent analogy, Steve. It's exactly like that, and often as quick.

But one side effect of that quickness, for me at least, is that a fair number of my shots come out crooked, that is, without a true horizontal line. That's rather obvious because I take most of my shots in city environments where there are a lot of right angles.

Given that I've been aware of this for awhile, and sometimes deliberately "true" the shot when taking it, I'm not quite sure why this happens. Now, when I'm tracking a power boat cruising down the Hudson, I know why those shots come out crooked. I'm biased by the boat's motion and I'm swiveling my body as I shoot. Same thing when I track birds or helicopters, as I do occasionally. But for static shots, I'm not sure, but I rather suspect some kind of preconscious perceptual-motor bias rather than mere sloppiness.

But of course, there are also shots where I'll move around a bit to get the right angle. That is, I see a possibility, but have to shift my position to realize it. I do that a lot. And still, sometimes I get the horizontal wrong.