Aspect Ratios and the Native Camera Format

[Jeff D. Welker]

Recently I was encouraged by Anna and Jay to try using a wide pano crop for a particular image I made while photographing at WTI. It was an interesting experiment and has me thinking more critically about stepping outside my cropping comfort zone and the native format (i.e. 3:2) that my camera sensor produces. Shortly after Anna's and Jay's encouragement, Scott Youmans made the comment in another thread that he resists formulas in photography - I assume he meant when cropping an image. With all this on my mind, this afternoon I received the latest edition of the digital photography magazine f/11. In it the editor wrote a short article on this very subject titled "The Tyranny of Format". He brings up some interesting points that I will consider when framing/cropping my images in the future. Here is a link to the article:

http://issuu.com/f11magazine/docs/issue38-november2014/12?e=3147757/9959389

[Anna M. Wood]

Very timely article.....   

[Scott Youmans]

I have a friend with whom I worked at GE many years ago. We used to talk about art and photography a lot (we were both technical illustrators at the time). One day she brought in a photo album she had put together with photos of her dogs, landscapes, etc.  I don't think there was a single photo that she had not cropped and I doubt that any two of them were necessarily identical in their proportions. It was a revelation! She had defied convention and done the unthinkable, actually taking an x-acto blade to her 4x6 prints!  Keep in mind this was around 1990 when the first we saw of our photos was when we picked them up from the developer. Such a simple thing to do yet it seemed almost like some law had been broken, like cutting a dollar bill in half. On the other hand I felt liberated. Finally I was freed from trying to fit everything into a box, the proportions of which were based on something entirely unrelated to the subject and any aesthetic sensibility. Certainly there are times when 4x6 works, or 2:1, etc. For practical reasons, as in a page layout, it can be useful to have identical proportions for a series of photos. For stand alone images I prefer to eyeball the crop and if it happens to come out to be some even number or golden mean or what have you then that's great but coincidental.  To attempt to fit your subject into a preconceived format strikes me as an unnecessary handicap unless there is a reason to do so. I do like the challenge of trying work with the square format when using my old medium format cameras. So I guess in that sense I'm limiting myself.  The difference being that I'm consciously doing this when I'm looking for subjects and it is done "in camera".  Just my 3.14159 cents worth! 

[Jay Beckman]

I will rarely hesitate to crop to whatever feels "right" bearing in mind however that the most expedient path to my website are aspect ratios available for direct sale (as opposed to anything that I would have to shepherd as a custom job)

[Scott Youmans]

That's is a good reason to use a standard print size!