I thought I'd try a little 1:1 aspect ratio. I also thought it would be good to use center-weighted averaging, since my subject would pretty much be the only thing in the picture. It was a flat cloudy day, so I used a Cloudy white balance to see if I could bring out the colors.
Until I took these pictures, I never really realized that this wind chime was black on one side, and green on the other.
Steve Thomas
Nice.
I myself am not very fond of the 1:1 aspect ratio. If I don't just leave it at the default (3:2 or recently 4:3), I like to crop to 16:9.
I love square images. My first camera made square images on 620 film. I made many images with 50x 'blads. I used the Kodak 36x36mm back. And I got the GFX with the idea of making 33x33 mm images.
I used at length as an amateur a Rolleiflex MX-VR, a 3.5F with Zeiss Planar, and still have and use seldomly 2.8F Planar whiteface in pristine condition.
I always loved the square format. It seems to me to not force you neither landscape nor portrait, nor two third rule, that even if you don't want to apply, it's always somewhere inside your head reminding 'Ow! you brake the two third rule aver there, that is serious art or rubbish ;-).
Square liberates me on a composition point of view, it's more neutral.
And in the good old days of at home amateur dark room develoment and print, printing square images let you always cut some test strips from the page :-).
Nowadays, cropping to square (or else) has all the time the kind of strange feeling I'm loosing pixels...
Greg
I agree. I started shooting square exclusively as a project. I find it teaches you a lot about composition because the sides are always so close, very subtle shifts in position make a big difference. I maybe started out thinking square was boring, limiting but it's the opposite. There are still some subjects where the subject demands a different aspect ratio, of course. You can't force everything into square 😁
I especially like the look of Hasselblad's SWC. With FF, that would be 16mm in a 1:1 crop. In APS-C, it is 11mm in 1:1 crop.
I was reading the other day that in a square format, the positive space and the negative space are equal. (look at our avatars).
Also, in 3:2 or a 16:9 ratios, the viewers' eyes move sideways from left to right and then back again.
In a 1:1 ratio, the viewers' eyes start in the center and rotate on a spiral, extending from the center and moving outwards.
Steve Thomas.
I loved the 1:1 when I shot weddings with a Mamiya C330 film camera with 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 negatives. I could decide how to crop when I was ordering prints. I had a hard time when I switched to digital imaging in 2005. Sotting Canons with the 2x3 aspect ratio. I was still dealing with making prints that didn't fit that ratio and missing the square format. Now it's normal, but there are many images that work better as a square and the format is interesting.
I've taken a couple of black and whites now in this 1:1 ratio.
Maybe it's a subconscious throwback to an earlier time. I don't know, but I like it.
For me, it just seems to fit B&W.
Steve Thomas
One of my first "serous" cameras was a Yashica 44 TLR that used 127 film. I later was given a Ricoh Diacord L, a pro-capable TLR that shot 120 film and provided terrific IQ. I think experience gained in composing within a square format was very worthwhile and an interesting challenge. With today's digital cameras that offer 1:1 ratio, it makes great sense to go square when you feel that works best for the scene/subject at hand. Your images here are good examples of that approach in action, IMO. 😉 It's one more creative opportunity our amazingly versatile 21st -century digital cameras make possible.
