Vertical Photographs

[ClaremontPhoto]

About two in every five of the random RFF photographs on the home page are vertically orientated.

About one in five hundred of my own photographs is a vertical.

Are people here taking verticals almost half the time? Or are they cropping horizontals to a vertical format?

 

[back alley]

i shoot more verticals when using the 25 but normally i prefer the horizontal.

 

[simonankor]

I know one member of RFF shoots verticals often because it's easier for left-eyed people. It keeps the camera off the rest of your face 🙂

 

[pvdhaar]

The choice for/against portrait or landscape format isn't always a free one.

I had an assignment two weeks ago where I shot in parallel with another photog on two locations. The pictures were to be merged into a slide show and because of that we had to shoot either everything vertical or everything horizontal. We decided to go with the in-camera landscape orientation, despite the human nature of the pictures.. Fortunately the decision was made long enough before, so that you could 'mentally adjust' to keep the camera level..

 

[canonetc]

I think it depends on the situation, as far as Vertical or Horizonal is concerned. It's a matter of deciding which way best gives you the subject and composition relationship that you desire.

Cropping; ah, well there are many philosophies on that one....usually to remove unwanted details. But from a purist attitude, cropping is verboten; get the shot right the first or second time. Although W. Eugene Smith was a master of cropping. He didn't care about HCB purism. Allegedly......

Chris
canonetc

 

[Dougg]

I suspect I shoot more verticals than horizontals, but if so it's not by much. Fairly equal numbers IOW...

 

[Ash]

I think it depends on the subject. I would have said my photo's were 50/50, but after the 60-odd from Camden almost all being horizontal, there is a little bias in the averages.

I think some of my better photo's are the vertical ones, but I quite love square negs now - you dont have to choose 😀

 

[dll927]

This is an interesting question. As it happens, my sister and I are both camera nuts, and when we go places together, I notice she seems to have more verticals than I do. We once went to the gardens at Huntington Museum in San Marino, CA, and by the time we looked things over, she had quite a few more verticals. To me, it's mainly a matter of the subject and how it will photograph. If it's vertically oriented, that's how I'll take it. Horizontal, ditto. A landscape will probably be horizontal, but a waterfall vertical. However, my sister is the one with the PhD, not I.

 

[oftheherd]

I do both, just tending towards what I think the photo I want will look best with. I have no idea what my ratio would be. I suspect it is more oriented towards horizontal, but ratio I wouldn't know.

 

[FrankS]

Depends solely on the situation/composition - which way fits/looks better.

 

[BrianShaw]

Ful agreement with those who said "it depends on the subject". It really does depend on the subject but most of mine tend to be landscape.

Truth be told... I really prefer square. But that's the evil MF SLR side of me. 😱

 

[Ash]

use a TLR 😀

at least then the parallax and seperate viewing lens means it pretends to be more RF than SLR