It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted one of these entries, but I believe what I have to say here will be quite useful for photographers of all levels.
Following the model of some of my previous photo tip entries, I’ll start off with a typical composition myth and then break it down.
Within photography lore, there’s two terms that we apply to the pictures we take and they’re known as “landscape” and “portrait”. And no I’m not talking about the “landscape” or “portrait” settings on your Point & Shoot or SLR camera, but whether we choose to frame our images horizontally or vertically.
Both these terms are misleading for one reason: it causes many of us to believe that the majority of our landscape photos should be shot in landscape mode and portrait photos ought to be shot in portrait mode. (I’ll be focusing the rest of my post on portraits or people shots) For the longest time I myself had fallen victim to this myth and had done just that, never really varying the orientation of my photo aside from tilting my camera, a technique I wrote about in Part 2 of my photo tip series.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with shooting people in portrait mode, but you’re missing out on capturing a lot of your best images if you ritualistically shoot vertically. Why? To really generalize, shooting vertically and up close places the focus entirely on the subject, which is sometimes what you want, but usually there’s very little regard to the background or environment, which might not be what you want if you think about it. This is why most studio portraits are shot vertically because there’s not really a dynamic background to take advantage of so photographers just fill the entire frame.
This is where landscape portraits differ. They tend to take greater advantage of the environment and this makes it easier to tell a story with your images. Landscape portraits usually have greater potential at allowing you to use the background to say something about your subject, so use that to your advantage. Now when both options are presented, I often choose to shoot horizontally over vertically.
If you look at the photos of accomplished and contemporary wedding photographers, their photos are shot just as much horizontally as vertically. My own favorite wedding photography duo takes absolutely stunning pictures of both, and appear to favor shooting in landscape more, at least when judging from the pictures on their site: http://www.chrispluslynn.com. For headshots, nobody in Vancouver is better at landscape head shots than Kevin Clark.
Below are some of my photos. For these particular images I shot a ton both in portrait and landscape mode. When I looked at all of them later on I enjoyed the landscape ones the best. I wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the warm summer environment otherwise.
These 4 images are all head shots, but shooting in landscape can be used for just about any kind of photography where people are the focus of your photos.
Aside from the obvious point this entry makes about landscape portraits vs portrait portraits, it’s also all about knowing what the rules of composition are and then breaking them. In this case, the “rule” says that we should stick to shooting vertically if the subject is tall (people) and horizontally if the subject is wide. This is a good guideline for beginners and one I might have advocated in a previous entry, but once you’ve mastered it, disregard it and shoot what works for you.
