(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
AFTER 20 YEARS OF MAKING SQUARE PICTURES-my "serious" work-I find it a bit flummoxing to be tinkering around with the rectangular format.
During the tinkering-playing with horizontal and vertical format full frame picture making-several thoughts have come to mind. Setting aside the square format signature identity thing-the more I think about that, the more it fades into the background-a thought I never really considered before has risen to the fore. I.E., the predominance of pictures made with the horizontal format / aspect (especially landscape pictures). FYI, I have no numeric stats to back up that thought but, it does feel right.
Hardware wise, that idea does make sense inasmuch as, throughout the history of photography, an overwhelming number of cameras have had viewing apparatus that is oriented to the horizontal format / aspect. Especially so in the modern era. The major exception, camera wise, being the (predominantly) medium format square format cameras.
Picture making wise, there are exceptions to the horizontal aspect /format procivility. Most notable is the portrait genre wherein most portraits are made in the vertical format aspect (group portraits excepted). Also, in my commercial photography life, I would guess that 90% of the pictures I made were in the vertical format aspect. That's cuz most of my pictures were made for the printed page-magazines, annual reports, etc. And to my previous point, hardware wise, Making vertical format / aspect pictures required turning the come on its "side" (its "natural" orientation?), or in the case of a view camera, rotating the back.
All of the above aside (and back to the signature identity thing), in the Fine Art Photography World, format / aspect matters inasmuch as most Fine Art picture makers rarely mix formats / apsect in a given body of work. That is to write that the format / aspect they work with is an integral ingredient of their vision / the manner in which thet see. That proclivity (amongst many other "rules") is as sacroscant in the Fine Art World as the one-camera, one-lens MO. Like it or not, good thing or not, the Fine Art World demands, if a practioner wishes to be taken seriously, a consistent artistic vision, technique and concept wise, in a given body of work.
That written, the Fine Art World is OK with an artist creating a new body of work that differs from that of a previous body of work. So, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, I am considering my full frame pictures to be a new body of work. And, to be rigorously consistent, I am leaning toward the veritical retangular format / aspect for all of the work.