Photographic aspect ratios

click photo to enlarge
The world wide web, it seems to me, has increased the amount of confrontation and stridency in photography. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this outweighs the co-operation and learning that the online world confers on our hobby and profession. However, the early years of my forty odd with camera in hand certainly didn't feature the vituperation I regularly see today. Photography is not alone in this of course, and it's possibly the opportunity to adopt extreme postures and language anonymously that encourages the outpourings of bile.

To stick with photography, I continue to be amazed about the subjects on which people have unwavering views that they broadcast and defend with boorish language. Brand loyalty, sensor size, fixed lenses versus zoom, black and white versus colour, the list is endless when it comes to the subjects that some photographers can get exercised about. I've even seen people vociferously arguing the merits of one aspect ratio over another. Now when it comes to this subject I play the field. I'll use 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1 as the subject requires. Sometimes I'll select the aspect ration before taking the shot, often I'll take it with the largest capture possible but with a different aspect ratio in mind, and frequently I'll crop post-capture. And the idea that one or another is intrinsically "best" or "better" than another seems to me absurd: all are possible, so choose the most appropriate. I've even been known - whisper it quietly - to choose a non-standard aspect ratio where it seemed to fit the subject better.

Today's photograph was one that I shot at 4:3 thinking that it might work well at 16:9. That turned out to be the case and is in fact the best aspect ratio for this image. It shows some of the inshore fishing boats on the River Witham at Boston, Lincolnshire, with in the distance, the tall tower of the medieval church of St Botolph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 34mm (68mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3
Image Stabilisation: On

Lister Blackstone No 1 Digger (Take 2)

click photo to enlarge

Sometimes, in the rush and routine of photography, I ignore my own advice. I've long known that it is best to look at and think about a photograph for a while before coming to an opinion about its merits. That's something I've advocated before on this blog. However, when I took my photographs of the old potato harvester that I posted yesterday, due to a dearth of acceptable fresh photographs, I didn't take this elementary step, and posted what I thought at the time was the best of my images. I got it wrong.

Not by a big margin, but wrong nonetheless. Moreover, I was wrong for a second reason that goes beyond making myself more familiar with the shots. Elsewhere in this blog I've proclaimed the virtues of different aspect ratios. I was a long-time user of Four Thirds cameras with their 4:3 aspect ratio. My current Canon camera outputs images at 3:2. The compact camera I use, a Panasonic LX3, offers both of those plus 16:9 and 1:1. After thirty years using a 35mm film SLR (3:2) I found the change to 4:3 interesting but not problematic. Moreover, after a while I found that I preferred it. I still do, though I find 3:2 is perfectly acceptable. The aspect ratios of 16:9 and 1:1 have their attractions for the right subject and composition. So, when I'd spent more time with my collection of shots of the potato harvester, I decided that, perhaps, one of the others was compositionally better than the one I posted. And, when I'd placed a 4:3 selection outline over the image to improve the composition further, I wondered how, after all these years, I could still make such an elementary error.

The answer to that question, I think, lies in photoblogging. Overall this blog has been something that has improved my photography considerably, giving me a focus, urgency and a widened range that has resulted in a keener eye and better shots. But a downside is that periodically my relatively high frequency of posting results in a dearth of shots and a posting date that is too close to the date I took the photograph. Hence, sometimes I haven't reflected sufficiently on the shot, quality control slips, and I post a photograph that, with hindsight, I could have bettered. So, today I post what I think is the better photograph as well as a detail showing the maker's name. Of course, that's only my point of view: yours may differ.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
 F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Aspect ratios and letterboxes

click photo to enlarge

When, in 1839, Rowland Hill was given a two-year contract to run his proposed postal system with its "penny post", standard delivery rates independent of distance, post boxes and the rest, he cannot have known just how it rapidly it would be taken up across Britain, but also by the rest of the world. Nor can he have appreciated the employment that he would give to carpenters, joiners and handymen, and the changes that these tradesmen would wreak upon the country's front doors. Because the fact is, letters delivered to private addresses need to be left there securely regardless of whether or not the householder is at home. So everyone, in the fullness of time, needed a letterbox, and this was (in Britain at least) usually a metal framed slot with a hinged flap in the front door.

This kind of letterbox remains the most common way of receiving letters. Moreover, the word has become a generalised description for many things that have that distinctive shape that is much wider than it is tall, including photographs. In moving film terms it is used to describe widescreen shown as a "slot" in a deeper screen such that there is a border at top and bottom. In still photography it generally means a format or crop wider than 16:9 (widescreen) and closer to a panorama format (though that is a fairly elastic term.)

I think of the format of today's cropped photograph as letterbox-shaped. In fact, its not quite wide enough to copy the shape of a door letterbox, though it is wider than 16:9. In print and on the web this kind of shape is widely used. It enables an editor or designer to place an illustration where the space for the more common 3:2 or 4:3 aspect ratio photograph is limited, and it offers a graphic element that can form a segment of the overall page layout rather than be an insert into a portion of it. I value cropped, letterbox-shaped photographs because they are sometimes the best way of forming a composition out of a larger image. My original shot of Morley Lane in Bicker, Lincolnshire has too much empty white snow at the bottom right, too much of the upper branches of the trees above, and doesn't make enough of the two distant figures. The letterbox crop helps to alleviate those problems.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Colour, fishing boats and aspect ratios

click photo to enlarge

"When you look at a colour picture you see the colour before you look at the message."
David Bailey (1938- ), English photographer

The quote above is taken from a recent interview that David Bailey gave to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Being David Bailey, the interview is full of quotable utterances, some of them insightful, others outrageous and a few that are intended, I'm sure, to "take the mickey". But, sticking with this statement on colour, here it is in context: "...black and white gives you the message immediately. Colour’s a warning thing. Berries are red so that the birds know to eat them. When they’re green they don’t eat them. When you look at a colour picture you see the colour before you look at the message. " I don't agree with Bailey on the first part of this. Black and white can give you the pattern before the message. Moreover, sometimes monochrome overlays the artist's message with meaning that derives from the medium. But, I do think that the last sentence is often true, and I think it is a positive aspect of working in colour. Colours do seduce the eye, and it usually happens immediately, before subject, line, composition, and rest come into play. It happened to me this morning when I decided to photograph these fishing boats on The Haven in Boston, Lincolnshire. The sun was strong, the light was harsh, and there were no clouds in the sky - not my favourite photographic weather. But when I looked at the boats I saw three primary colours in a row - yellow, red and blue - and I thought that this sequence was enough to hang a photograph on, despite the countervailing circumstances.

However, there was one thing I knew I'd have to do wth this subject: change the aspect ratio from 3:2 to 4:3. I find myself doing it reasonably frequently with my current camera. It wasn't something that bothered me too much in the days of 35mm film, but having used a 4/3 digital camera for several years I have come to appreciate the less elongated shape of 4:3.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On