Lifeguard off duty

Roswell Ivory is at a small beach north of Copenhagen called Bellevue. It is part of a large complex that features houses, apartments, a theater, and the beach with various buildings, including the old lifeguard towers.

Composition-wise, the only way this image appeared right was to place the tower off-center.

However, the perspective is affected when you photograph something with a wide angle from below (first image).

This may look cool if it’s a building, but the three legs and round top of this tower seem off.

So, a simple perspective correction, making the lines (and tower) vertical while maintaining the horizon level, makes everything seem better.

The easiest and quality-wise best way to do this is to Go to the Transform Toolbar in Lightroom and correct the perspective, either manually using the sliders or by clicking Vertical or Auto (if that works - it doesn't always) before continuing to edit.

In this case, I did it in Photoshop, using Edit > Free Transform after the retouching to show what's really happening with the image: As you can see on the blue outline, the top of the image is leaned downward or closer to us while the bottom stays put.

When doing it this way, I always try to make some guidelines (open rulers and "pull out" from the rulers), set one for the horizon, and a couple around the areas that need to be vertical.
And then one to gauge the model's height so I can adjust this after changing perspective.
That wayI avoid distorting her aspect ratio making her wider or taller.

Which version do you prefer, and why?

Personally, I prefer the corrected one; it just seems more "right," especially when comparing the before and after. But, it might just be me being fostered on a 4x5 view camera shooting products that had to be vertical in most cases.