Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach’s In)” is an instrumental composition recorded in 1965 by The T-Bones and released as a single the same year.
I believe that the kind of camera that you use and the way you use it determines the format or shape of the final image. You need look no further than the hundreds maybe thousands of YouTube videos shot using a vertical format—the shape of a smartphone—despite the fact that every TV show or movie that the person who shot that video has ever seen in their entire life is horizontal.
I was having coffee with professional photographer and all around good guy Barry Staver last week and we were talking about the Panasonic Lumix GH5. I have been thinking about getting one and since the introduction of the Lumix GH6 ($2,197.99) prices for the camera are relatively low, but alas they are still not free. Especially since the the word on the street is that while Lumix GH6 is a superb video camera, the GH5 or even G9 are better for shooting still images/
Barry told me that as he shoots more video for clients with his GH5 he’s also shooting more still images using a horizontal format. The most surprising part of our conversation was that, more often then not, these portraits are delivered to clients using a square format because social media and many websites now show people’s headshots as squares.
Back in the film days when I got my first medium format camera, a Mamiya C33 TLR, it made photographs using the classic 6x6cm square format and to tell the truth I never thought much about it at the time. I happily made many thousands of images with that camera as I also did later when I switched to shooting with a Hasselblad 500CM, another square format camera. The legendary photographer Ernst Wildi, who wrote the insightful book Master Composition Guide for Digital Photographers, came at his approach from the perspective of a lifetime of using a square format Hasselblad.
How I made this shot: For this portrait of the statuesque Danielle (six feet tall in here bare feet). the main light was a LED light with a 47-inch softbox that was placed at camera right. At camera left is a 42 x72-inch Westcott Scrim Jim Cine with white cover for some fill. Backdrop was a 5×7-foot Photo Grey Savage Infinity vinyl background. Camera was a Canon EOS 60D with EF-S15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (at 46mm) and an exposure of 1/100 sec and f/5.6 and ISO 640. Image was retouched and slightly tweaked in Photoshop with the Glamour Glow filter that’s part of Color Efex Pro. It was cropped in Photoshop using its Crop tool that gives you the option of maintaining the original image’s aspect ratio or you can choose from a bunch of others, including square (1:1.)
The shape of your photographs boils down to its aspect ratio (see my post on this subject) and these days most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras let you shoot in-camera using ratios from 3:2, 4:5, 4:3 and 1:1 aka square.
So the next time you’re making a portrait, set the camera in 1:1 mode and see if you like the results. You can always shoot in RAW+JPEG mode and still have the full frame image available for use from the RAW file, as seen be the comparison at left in ON1 Photo RAW, the perfect image enhancement alternative to software subscription-averse photographers.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $22.23, as I write this. Used copies start at the hard-to-beat price price of $8.91 and the Kindle version is $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.