Importance of Dimensions of Photos?

[trooper5010]

I used to have a canon camera that were those big ones that wasn't quite a DSLR, but the photos it took where completely square. When I look back at those photos, I want to crop a ton of them to widescreen but a few actually look really good with them being perfectly square.

My question is how can you know when a picture can compose itself to look good being square, or when it can look good being widescreen or any other type of dimension? Also what other alternate dimensions are there.. or are there any tutorials on photo dimensions?

Here are some examples that I've taken with my previous camera that worked pretty well:


The Puget Sound by Phil Engel, on Flickr


Young Bliss by Phil Engel, on Flickr


Watery Waves by Phil Engel, on Flickr

[Doug Sundseth]

There's an old story about someone who asked a carver how he could get such amazingly accurate representations of bears. "I just cut away everything that doesn't look like a bear."

With photos, just cut away everything that doesn't add to your image. (Sometimes what adds to your image is empty space, BTW.)

There's no general reason to pick a particular aspect ratio (ratio of height to width) for a photo. Crop to the shape that looks good for what you shot. The only caveat is that you'll need to either build custom frames or mat your photos up to a standard size if you don't print at a standard size.

[navcom]

Just like art, cropping is in the eye of the beholder. The best advice is to crop for the composition. There is no "perfect" crop every time or for every particular type of shot.

The traditional crop for 35mm is a rectangle with one side longer than the other. How you orient the shot will have an impact on how the composition is received. Most portraits of people tend to look better with the crop running vertical and most landscape scenes tend to look better with the crop running horizontal...thus the terms "portrait" or "landscape" for paper orientation. That certainly doesn't mean this is a stead-fast rule. Many compositions run contrary to this.

The most popular medium format film size is 6x6...which is square. This has it's advantages in that you can shoot the same scene and not necessarily worry about rotating the camera back and forth for different compositions but usually the final print will be cropped one way or the other.

No matter what you are shooting, it's always best to crop for the composition and put some thought into what your final image will be and shoot accordingly. Most pros will tell you that they already know what the final framed print will look like way before they ever push the shutter button...thus they are only "fulfilling the destiny of their vision". If your artistic vision sees it cropped square and it works for the composition, it's correct. Likewise, if your vision calls for a panoramic with a 5:1 ratio and it works, that's correct to.

Hope that helps!

[RichardTaylor]

Just do what it takes to make the image look good.

[Digital Colodion]

It all depends. I was told at school that a square gives the sensation of tight. Another thing is that nowadays everything has a widescreen A.R tv and monitors...and according to the image scientists it's "better" there's a whole theory about this.....at the end it all depends on you on your workflow, but you must always think what happens behind, in and in front on the camera and what will happen. Cheers.