Square format images

I'm kind of fond of the square format:

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Eichler in, Eichler out

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Venus & St. Ignatius

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Pigeon netting

Most of my pix are cropped in the LCD, since I learned to shoot with (decades of) slides. But most of those which are cropped (other than minimally) are cropped square.
 
Is that a Collie I spy here - with those two chickens in the background?

It is different to set yourself up with a different way of photographing - am I correct that you're setting your camera for the size?
 
Is that a Collie I spy here - with those two chickens in the background?

It is different to set yourself up with a different way of photographing - am I correct that you're setting your camera for the size?

Yes, that's our put-upon collie. My wife has 5 chickens in our suburban yard, and the dog is quite long-suffering with them. I thought this kind of caught the essence of their relationship. Sometimes she's lying in the middle of the yard, they are pecking all around her, sometimes grabbing some fur, but she doesn't chase them or anything (but if a squirrel comes in the yard -- forget it!). She even chased away a hawk that tried to have a chicken snack.

I've set my EP1 to square format, B&W jpg, high contrast, 8.0 and MF to about 5 ft. Perhaps not all of those shots are that way, but I'm trying to concentrate on framing and also to see things in tones, rather than colors. You learn quickly that what in color looks "different" is actually the same tone, and makes a boring photo!
 
Thanks, wt21 - that is a wonderful description of your collie's day to day life. She sounds like a great girl, long suffering but also very loyal as collies are known to be. Our dog is a smaller version...called a Shetland Sheepdog. I enjoyed that picture in particular due to sensing just what you were after. Also thanks for letting us know how you're going about your square black and white project, too.

Yes, Will, this is good thread... Christian - love that field of flowers - to name but one of these squares that have been added recently!
 
This is probably a noob mentality (me), but I typically don't really think about the format at all. I don't think whether a 16:9, 4:3, 3:2 or 1:1 will work best in a particular situation. I just use the largest format possible, take a photo, and then end up cropping to a format that I like (assuming I don't like what I see in the original format). I guess I should be thinking more about it before I take the photo eh?
 
Pavel - have always really liked that photo of yours.

Armando, everyone is different. Me, I use the frame to get exactly what I want and almost never ever crop - unless I took the picture crookedly and then sometimes I have to. I guess truth be told I hate cropping because everything in my frame seems important to my view of what I was after. However, the photo I think I put up in the beginning of this thread was larger and was, as mentioned, cropped to a square due to a photo pal's suggestion... So, never say never, eh?
 
BB, I think this is what we are all trying to do - to get the perfect composition without cropping. I guess that's because we are taught that those who crop too much are sloppy photographers. ;) However, getting the perfect shot is not always possible. In my image above, I wanted to create an impression of an endless wall going in all directions, and to achieve that, I had to crop out the train windows. Also I wanted to create an entirely static central composition and that usually works well only in square format because 3:2 or 4:3 ratios usually are too long to be perfectly balanced if your main subject is located in the center of the frame.
 
Serial cropper here. I leave it on 3:2 or 4:3 and crop away. A lot of architectural shots require some distortion correction for converging verticals and that's cropping. Framing is cropping - whether in camera or in pp you're doing the same thing.
 
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