Beware the square

[Music] hi everybody its Stephen Brooke and welcome to my youtube channel on architectural photography and composition take a moment if you would and please subscribe to the channel it's free it's anonymous the only time you'll hear from me is when we have a new video but it's important you can get in touch with me if there are things you would like to see me cover there probably things other people would want to hear about and I would be happy to address any of those and if you have friends who are photographers are interested in this tell them to go to youtube Stephen Brooke photography and subscribe also check out my book on architectural photography it's it's 360 pages and I promise you there is something on every page in every chapter that I think will be a value to you that will be helpful in your work I entitled this episode beware the square because what I want to talk about is why I think square format should be avoided in architectural photography whether its exteriors landscape or interiors now square format has a value when you look at portraits a lot of them like portraits by Franz halls are very often square or close to square here's Ghirlandaio Paul clay Jean Miro their work works within a square format there's a lot of abstract art that's done in square format or Tondo and round format but architecture is different architecture has either a horizontal thrust or a vertical thrust and the photography should represent that you should feel whether it's a horizontal feeling or a vertical feeling your photo should convey that here's des and Roberts did a lot of work in the holy land Cana Leto and Venice here's a decidedly vertical format decidedly horizontal format this is a bright line in Fort Lauderdale definitely a horizontal thrust here's a high-rise on Brickell Avenue in Miami definitely a vertical thrust interiors the same vertical thrust horizontal thrust not square so be clear when you're photographing what it is that you're trying to emphasize for example this is a high-rise building but in this photograph I'm in horizontal format because I want to emphasize the siting but in the other photograph were it's strictly vertical I'm emphasizing the height of the building and one thing I want to point out when you do high-rises for example in vertical format the distance between the bottom of the frame and the bottom of the building the top of the frame and the top of the building is really very important if there isn't much space you'll pressure the building and it won't have any monumental quality so what I've done here is this is the horizontal view this is the vertical view what I've done is I have cropped this to a square format to make a point in this case the horizontal thrust and the vertical thrust are kind of balanced which means it's not going in any real direction and it makes the image static now the other thing that I've done I've talked about in other videos is I put this corner of the building right in the middle of the frame which I have recommended never to do because what it does is it sets up two points of view got one going to the right one going to the left and it makes that image really static so here poor is as a vertical thrust high-rise building here I've squared it up so that the height and the width are in competition for attention which means you're not really showing the sight and you're not really emphasizing the height of the building and you really need to do one or the other here in this interior out of Miami International Airport let me stop for a moment I you can't get people a lot of shots in Miami Airport but what I do is wait for them to kind of be in areas that don't really conflict with the overall feeling of the architecture so these people are over here on the side this guy's over here in the middle there actually fortunately looking into the frame these people are moving around but they're in line they're not affecting my overall view of the architecture again lots going on very wide angle I'm low to the ground so I can see underneath the overhang its axial composition so I can deal with all of these elements so look what happens now your eye starts here it starts here it moves around the image and it finally ends up back here look what happens I artificially cropping this to a square now it's a bowling alley now your eye just zooms right straight to the back dead photograph no dynamism nothing this is a situation living room residential I could have taken this picture with a 17 millimeter perspective control lens but it would have been too distorted for for this kind of a setup so what I did is I have a 24 millimeter perspective control lens so that I can take one photograph and then shift the lens to take the the top part of the image the ceiling and all when I put them together in photomerge and I will do a video on how to handle photomerge look what happens when I put the two together now I end up with a photograph that's basically square so the width of the image and the height of the image are equally balanced dead photograph no dynamism so what I did was in this case I cropped in the left because I don't need all that window and I cropped in from the right to now give the vertical thrusts to this interior which was my idea from the very beginning now I know you take photographs and post them on Instagram and Instagram automatically crops your images so even if you have a horizontal image it will crop it down but you don't have you don't have to do that you can have there's this little double arrow tool in Instagram and you post your photo click on this and it will give you your entire photo without cropping and I recommend that you do this so remember whether you're shooting or processing in the studio decide if your image is going to be a vertical or a horizontal and make a decidedly one or the other and beware the square it makes a static image for architecture so again thank you for visiting check out the other YouTube videos please subscribe to the channel and again check out Steven Brook photography calm and have a look at my textbook thanks for visiting hope to see you again soon

Channel: steven brooke

Views: 5,094

Keywords: square, square photo, square photography, instagram, instagram photo, instagram photography, architectural, photography, architect, landscape, photo, photography class, master class, how to, lesson, architectural photography, 4K, Steven Brooke, Steven Brooke Photography, stevenbrookephotography.com, composition, aspect, ratio

Id: Jg9dcX4ef7Q

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020