What influences the shape of a photographic composition?
From behind the lens of most cameras, your view of the world falls typically within a rectangular form, either vertical or horizontal. Cameras may artificially allow you to adjust the field of view so as to more easily visualize a square or panoramic canvas, but in any event, the camera itself influences how you visually perceive the world. In the end, it will often dictate the two-dimensional shape of your final work. If you consider how you actually see, it is obvious that there no straight lines whatsoever at the edge of your vision. We are wonderfully adept at defocusing and perceiving a cone of light, emphasizing the horizontal, in an arc of about 120 degrees. And we instantly focus on detail, drawing our perceptual attention like a telephoto lens to movement, color and forms that have alerted us.
Are there other influences which give shape to our final compositions? Many. Where will your image find a home? On a wall, or in a magazine, cover of a book? Does it need to fill the banner of web page, correspond the screen of a computer? What sizes does printing paper come boxed in? These are influences which subtly shape our final images.
My own experience has led me to three forms. A perfectly framed image within the boundaries of a camera’s film or sensor can’t be easily changed. That’s the final shape of a print in most cases. No cropping necessary. But if I’m creating narrative with multiple images, a story that moves and invites time along as a participant, I love long horizontal panels.
And when the image abandons time and embraces stillness, I’ll take a square image over any alternative. For years I used a 2-1/4” medium format camera and the images I acquired are more calm, settled, rooted, more peaceful than the images I capture with my rectangular formats. I don’t think it has to do with current politics; it’s the natural dynamics of composition within a square.
You may not agree. I’d be curious to know.
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