I got the bright idea a while back to create a photo wall over the little table in the kitchen where we spend most of our time. My thought was that I have TONS of photos, and I could change out the photos as the seasons changed, or whenever I felt like it for the fun of it. Great idea, right?
SO -- I got a bunch of photo frames. I got frames with mats that accommodate an 8" square format piece. I recruited my dad (who is a perfectionist and so is THE PERSON I knew would be sure that the frames were hanging exactly right) and we hung six of them on my wall -- three across and two high. Okay. He hung them and I just handed him things. Still.
That was in early December.
This is March. SOON it will be mid-March. And the pictures in my frames are still the same black and white photo that was in them at the store. Yes. You heard me right.
At first, it was just that Christmas got in the way. Then it was trying to make the time to find a set of six photos that I could crop down to the right size -- plus I needed a new printer so I could print them out myself -- plus THAT was not working well so I needed some new photo editing software -- plus ...
You get the picture. (pun)
So now I'm going through my photos and finding out that my favorite photos quit being my favorite photos as soon as they are cropped down into a square format. Logical, but the logic switch in my brain must have toggled off at some point in, oh, November. So I've been playing with photos that AREN'T my favorites to see if the square crop helps them. In some cases it does.
Now, because these frames (with the black and white photos of identical sailboat rigging or something equally confusing) are INSISTING that I fill them PLEASE before 2013 rolls around, I'm trying my best to figure out what makes for good composition in a square format. I'm thinking there are some different rules than with a rectangular format -- there must be. It looks like we can break the rule that says not to put your subject in the very center, for one. I suspect that we may find much higher or lower "horizon" lines work in square format, too. Anyone out there have any ideas/rules/thoughts, etc on square format?
For now, I'm going to just play it cool and work at being square.
3 comments:
I've been wanting to play around with some square format photos. But, alas, I have no suggestions for how to crop them! Looking forward to seeing what you do--the avocados look good!
And I thought I was an over-thinker. I may have met my match. :)
Maybe you need to crop your photos so that just one side of each object is revealed. Maybe even crop them so closely that it becomes a guessing game to decide what the original object in each photo was.
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