‘Square v. Portrait’

[Khoi Vinh looking at an Instagram shot of his in the square crop, and how he would have cropped it for portrait][1]: > I’m not arguing that Instagram should allow portrait images. I’m just saying the world is more interesting than just squares. There’s a lot that is great about the square crop, but it’s…

[Khoi Vinh looking at an Instagram shot of his in the square crop, and how he would have cropped it for portrait][1]:

> I’m not arguing that Instagram should allow portrait images. I’m just saying the world is more interesting than just squares.

There’s a lot that is great about the square crop, but it’s also not a very useable image crop. You rarely see frames for square crops, and your displays are rectangular. In my house I can often be heard, rather rudely, barking at people: “why don’t you shoot that picture/video in an *useable* orientation.” Meaning: stop shooting video in portrait and stop taking group photos in portrait. I try to shoot 95% of all my photos in landscape, with only an odd few in portrait.

I simply find that every time I take a good shot in portrait, there isn’t much I can do with that shot that I actually want to do with it. It’s doubly annoying for square images. They can look great, but then what the hell do I do with a square image? It looks great on my iPhone screen, but outside of that it just looks like: where did the rest of the picture go?

[1]: http://www.subtraction.com/2013/08/26/square-v.-portrait

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