Photography Project: Tips for shooting square photographs

1308_MFA_San Francisco_120-Edit

I recently read an e-book by Andrew Gibson called Square.  I have been intrigued by square photographs, but never really sure what captured my attention.  Was it because they hearkened back to photography decades ago and had a retro feel to them?  I set off to find my own answers.

I thought I might as well do it right, so I put on my $20 plastic Holga lens (you can buy these lenses from Holga Direct; they mimic the effect of a toy camera) and set out to find some compelling architecture.  I landed on Pasadena City Hall (Part 2 of this post will be San Francisco).

Things I learned

Symmetry works best in the square format.  This goes completely against the rule of thirds, and I found I was reminding myself that I would be cropping to a square format.  It was a great exercise for keeping the end result in mind.

1308_MFA_San Francisco_081-Edit

Shapes are important.  Because you are minimizing the “real estate” for your image, what gets included must have impact.  Strong shapes create that impact, and in a simple way.

1308_MFA_San Francisco_101-Edit

Eliminate clutter.  Andrew Gibson talks about simplicity.  Eliminate elements that aren’t necessary, focus on “the main thing”.

1308_MFA_San Francisco_108-Edit

Dead space.  Having negative space works well in this format, it supports keeping focus on the “main thing” and helps to simplify.

1308_MFA_San Francisco_112-Edit

Mono toned images reinforce all of the other elements that make a great square image.  When it doubt take the color out (next week, I will show you some where I simplified the color scheme rather than eliminating it).

1308_MFA_San Francisco_089-Edit

Here are a few more:

1308_MFA_San Francisco_125-Edit
1308_MFA_San Francisco_110-Edit
1308_MFA_San Francisco_104-Edit
1308_MFA_San Francisco_097-Edit
1308_MFA_San Francisco_095-Edit

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s