Re-think your composition

Consider creative framing and capture images that make your viewers look twice

All digital cameras are designed to be held in landscape format, with the rectangular-aspect sensor positioned to create an image that is longer than it is tall. There is a logic to this approach – human vision has a panoramic quality to it that means landscape orientation feels natural to us. The only time we usually consider turning the camera to shoot tall images is when shooting portraits or very tall, thin subjects such as buildings. There are many other occasions however when a switch in frame orientation can benefit composition – the photographer simply has to be able to recognise when this is the case. When there is a strong foreground element, a popular technique is to choose a low angle and use portrait format to produce a sense of depth, with the eye being led from the bottom of the frame up into the middle and background. This technique has its own set of challenges; the camera can be placed so close to the foreground that depth of field is severely limited, resulting in a blurred background or loss of fine detail through diffraction, caused by very narrow aperture settings. This can be overcome through careful focusing and placement of the foreground subjects within the focal plane. At the other extreme, panoramas allow ultra-wide perspectives that encompass tremendous expanses of detail, and so are ideally suited to capturing wide landscape vistas.

meanwhile, lens choice can be a complex business. Sometimes the widest or longest lens is not suitable, but when using a midrange focal length, we have to be sure our framing is not simply recreating what our viewers see every day with their own eyes.

“our framing should not simply recreate what our viewers see every day”