Further ponderings on the square

It has been only a few days, but a lot of thinking has been done in regards to the square image as “the one way” or at least the dominant way of the future.

Things I have noticed so far.

Most of my previous images can be made square. Some are pushed into the size, occasionally with a little too much tension introduced, others go easily. Occasionally an image actually becomes obvious and useable, when it was previously over looked (looking with “square eyes” has actually netted me several new compositions), and many are stronger than their rectangle form.

4:3 ratio has helped as it looks like I basically shoot squarer naturally than I did with 3:2 cameras, which also leads me to think, we are all slaves to our chosen formats. The 4:3 format looks to be forcing me to concentrate on the middle of the frame naturally, aware that the sides are of limited value. I am no longer shooting “semi wide” format and I seem to have adjusted to it..

Most of my 4:3 images clean up and gain strength when cropped square, almost like they are finding their true form. There is almost always extraneous detail on the edges that is surplus, even detrimental, to the image that is often only left in to retain dimensional consistency. I think that if I was shooting 3:2 ratio, this would have been deterrent enough, probably pushing me towards panoramic format instead.

Square is easier to frame with well. It is clean, logical and balanced. There are no sides that have to forced into the frame and even thinking of width becomes adjusting height or a “spreading out” of the image area. Every part of the frame becomes equally important. In square i am surer of my framing. It either works or it does not, clear and simple. It seems to have the same effect as the old trick of looking at an image in the mirror to see if it is balanced.

I will be using slightly wider lenses to get the compositions I get now, or over time start to crop tighter. This extra tightness is actually going to be used as for creative benefit. The tight frame is much harder to implement with a rectangle as the looseness of the frame and forced width rarely suit any subject perfectly. This, I suppose could be said of the square, but there is something very settled about the square, very humble and unassuming. Even miss-queued compositions can sit well. It is actually hard to frame badly, although their is usually a best framed option. Something I particularly like is the lack of rules. You can break them all.

Rule breaking centring. This as a rectangle image lacked strength. The eye wandered across the frame finding little of interest at the edges. The square increase the strength (and relative size) of the line in the middle and helps justify it. The ey…

Rule breaking centring. This as a rectangle image lacked strength. The eye wandered across the frame finding little of interest at the edges. The square increase the strength (and relative size) of the line in the middle and helps justify it. The eye now runs north-south rather than centre out.

The balance required in the rectangle frame (unless a true cinema wide format is used) is loose and can be contradicting, even confusing (even the choice between portrait and landscape shapes can be vexing). The square is strong from any direction it is applied, so lower left, upper right, centred, bottom edge all become viable and easily implemented. Rather than being locked into a shape, the shape becomes an aide to creative framing. Maybe it just because using it semi exclusively is new to me, but it is amazing how freeing it feels.

There is less cropping.

The common lens weakness of sift corners is mitigated or avoided fully. This is not a huge problem with M43 lenses, but what little there is, is avoided.

Any shape paper or frame can harmoniously accommodate a square (or squares).

Printing ideas pop up, rather than print to frame shape trouble shooting.

Feelings of “what if the square is too limiting” are addressed by the knowledge that all shots are taken in RAW, so the extra breathing space is still retained for later, but so far this has not been an issue. Shooting for square seems to eliminate the desire to look for rectangles.

Shooting square really fits M43 camera handling. The waist high or eye piece dynamic, square framing preview and minimal pixel loss all blend seamlessly into a harmonious work flow. If I was still shooting 3:2 SLR’s we would not be having this conversation.

The only other format that appeals is the 2:1 or wider cinematic format. I have set this up as a custom shooting set as a high res 16:9, intending to crop even wider. High res is probably not necessary and is limiting in application (maybe an EM1-X for and held?!). Any regular rectangles now seem to be a confused nothing of a format. All restrictions are artificial to a point, but your images have to be committed to a shape at some point. Too me the only two things that are important in a format are (1) being invisible as possible and (2) being as powerful as possible.

The multiple subjects in this image drawing the eye around the frame is diluted in the 4:3 ratio original. A square would not suit as the dynamic would be lost, so extra wide it is. The eye lands first on the woman in the middle, then either left or…

The multiple subjects in this image drawing the eye around the frame is diluted in the 4:3 ratio original. A square would not suit as the dynamic would be lost, so extra wide it is. The eye lands first on the woman in the middle, then either left or right and back.

Technically imperfect, this image still has a feeling of drama out of proportion to it’s subjects. Cropping wider eliminates the distracting irrelevances above and below and the dynamic of the main subjects comes very much to the fore.

Technically imperfect, this image still has a feeling of drama out of proportion to it’s subjects. Cropping wider eliminates the distracting irrelevances above and below and the dynamic of the main subjects comes very much to the fore.

All is not perfect in Squaresville. I have noticed a tendency to shoot wide rather than crop tighter, but this will come as I become more practiced.

There is also a tendency to flatten and over organise the frame, making the frame very rigid. I need to pay more attention to depth, blur and the near-far dynamic.

I still have rectangle shooting habits, like turning to portrait orientation instinctively.

I need to re-learn my lenses, especially my wide angles. I think I will have to stick to zooms in the near future until I acclimatise as my 17 feels like a 25 and my 12 feels like a 14, but the added thought process of landscape or portrait orientation is gone, so zooming will likely not confuse the issue (see above).

To summarise, I am still happy with the move to square, but I am also aware there is a little work and practice to do.

Hard line thinking, the future of street photography

I love street photography.

I am sick of street photography.

I need to qualify that remark, as much for me as for you.

Maybe it is too much avid self-saturation of the form, or trying too hard to find some relevance in it, but either way, I have started to “see through the makeup”. To see the artificial veneer of repetition for what it is.

First up, I am as guilty as anyone else of the thinks that are starting to annoy me and I recognise that I and everyone else, has the right to just ‘do” street photography however they wish (especially however they wish), but I am starting to want more, both from myself and from others.

Just like landscape, fashion, wedding and any other form of photographic endeavour, street shooting is heavily serviced with dozens (1000’s?) of talented shooters, who are all starting to blend together in content and intent. Everything, I suppose, settles for an accepted norm, some variations of that norm, then aberrations that create their own sub-genre or whither and die. The problem here is this blanket of normality provides a place where we can all hide as a like minded flock.

Street photography is an old form of photography. If you include candid photography of events and the realm of documentary journalism under it’s vast (vague) umbrella, it even goes back to the American Civil War with Brady and co. My first awareness of it, without even knowing what it was called, was the early 1980’s National Geographic style. It is basically a departure from documenting people in staged portrait images (as the technology forced), trying to get to the heart of an event and it’s consequences.

Cartier Bresson is often recognised as the father of modern street photography in the modern sense and his subject (usually Paris streets, but not always) helped to define the term “street” as a separate sub-genre of the more general documentary style, but I include Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange, Eugene Smith, Sam Abell, Fred Herzog, Saul Leiter, Sebastiao Salgado, Pentti Sammaallahti and many, many others into the broader scope. I view them all as attempting the same thing, candid, real life, human endeavour and human condition story telling. The roots of street photography are in documentary photography, the roots of documentary photography are in a need for understanding.

Why am I so frustrated?

The common thread of modern street imaging seems to be based on a disconnected (and disconnecting) , semi abstract, emotionless style using dark humour, cleverness and coincidence as a badge of honour. Humour has it’s place, but should it be the pinnacle of an art form? We are turning street photography into a type of short form parody like political cartooning.

This reliance on a form of loose abstractness, held together by commonality in thinking is possibly leading to a trivialisation of the core of street photography and a reliance on gimmicks and cliche.

Where is the connection? Where is the emotion?

The very first lesson any NG or similar shooter will tell you is something like “know your subject, connect and understand, be patient”. By this I do not mean intellectual knowledge (research), but a deeper, more respectful understanding of the subjects themselves. Salgado’s work for instance, came from working in the finance industry, learning the plight of the people he worked amongst, then using the camera to convey what he felt and why he felt it.

This is one of the few street images I have taken that I “respect”. The moment of desperate stillness and dignity captured against the shallow rush of humanity lets me see inside something bigger than myself. This is not what I usually manage to cap…

This is one of the few street images I have taken that I “respect”. The moment of desperate stillness and dignity captured against the shallow rush of humanity lets me see inside something bigger than myself. This is not what I usually manage to capture, so lets put it down to luck not effort.

What do you think? A deeper understanding of two brief moments in these peoples lives, or simply a photographically balanced coincidence. When you start to question, even your favourite images fall short.

What do you think? A deeper understanding of two brief moments in these peoples lives, or simply a photographically balanced coincidence. When you start to question, even your favourite images fall short.

There could also be a question of “Higher Art”, where the avalanche of similar images is simply over whelming my senses, numbing me to the basic goodness of these images.

A good image is a good image. If it triggers an emotional response, then, on some level , it is art by definition, but are we trying to funnel that response down the same pathways, cutting off others.

I like happiness in my street images. This is swimming against the tide and I know it, but I still like it.

Shock, awe, fear, confusion, aggression sell papers and to some extent art. What about genuine happiness, dignity, harmony or compassion? When you look at the work of early documentary and street photographers, their work is a balance of emotions. often this distinction is subtle. It may literally be a matter of inches or seconds between an negative or positive message. Even the hardened war photographer can find humour, strength and happiness in times of distress, (again Salgado looks for dignity and grace, not suffering, in his images of the poor and starving) so why do we look so hard for negatives to express our safe lives?

Why not?

Why not?

Japan in particular has taught me that even in a strictly ordered society, where apparently personal unhappiness is high, people learn to grab every opportunity for happiness. They treat happiness as we treat dissatisfaction, as the anti reality, the denial of a fact and go against the flow. On any given Sunday, the Japanese express their hyper selves, letting it all out, before returning to the mundane.

I deeply hope that the stronger ethic of documentary and social commentary continues to exist alongside the shallower trends of street imaging. The erosion of journalistic integrity and the severe reduction in incentive for talented people to go the extra mile is being countered partially by an upsurge of self driven social media reportage, so maybe street photography, when the fad is over, will settle into a more harmonious relationship with the new “hard” documentary style.

I guess what I am worried about on a fundamental level is that street photography will go into the realm of “only interesting to those that do it” like so many other forms of specialised art. If we stop trying to connect to others who are not like us (non photographers), then only we will care, like some funny little club based on an obscure hobby.

I think street photography is worthy of more than that.