Landscape or Portrait?

One of the things I encourage when I'm teaching photography is experimenting with different aspect ratios when you're composing an image.  Most of us have a tendency to take landscape format images when using a camera and portrait format images when using a phone - this is simply a function of the way the devices are built.

The subject is (rightly) a key factor in figuring the best aspect ratio but the other factor that often drives my choice of image shape is what the picture is going to be used for.  I tend to imagine my images being viewed on a desktop or laptop monitor or as part of a stream of images on Twitter or Facebook - where a landscape format seems to fit more naturally, and a portrait image often needs an extra click to see the whole image.

So, since I really should practice what I preach, over the next few days I'm going to experiment with taking portrait format images on my morning walks.

The landscape images from this morning (at the C S Lewis Reserve) included



The landscape alternatives I took at the same time included



You might also have spotted that I swapped from 16:9 to 3:2 format too - the 16:9 landscapes look 'right' on most screens, 16:9 portraits look too 'thin'.

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