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Author Topic: Crushed Boat, Penryn  (Read 4368 times)

John R Smith

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Crushed Boat, Penryn
« on: March 31, 2011, 08:41:41 am »

When I first got my digital back for the Hasselblad, I had a really hard time adjusting to the 645 rectangular format. In fact it is only now, after about a year with the DB, that I am starting to feel more comfortable composing to the rectangle. That’s not too surprising, I suppose, because I shot 6x6 B/W film with square negatives almost exclusively for well over 30 years, with a Yashica, then a Rollei 2.8F, and then my ‘Blads. Looking back through my film work again now, there are some shots that I just can’t imagine working as well in 4:3 as they do square. This is one of them, which seems to me to be made for the square – two old wooden boats on the foreshore at Penryn.

Some people say that the square is a very static format, and rather restricting – what do you think?

John
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Bruce Cox

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2011, 09:38:33 am »

I think square formats are very static and restricting, but that this coin has two sides.  Squares are not as mushy and indifferent as rectangles.  The structural dynamics and compositional influences are both simpler and more powerful with squares.  It's a good horse if you can ride it.

Bruce
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Bruce Cox

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2011, 09:58:27 am »

Your photo of the crushed boat reminds me of the saying that: funerals are for the living.  Your sufficient, but only as much as necessary, inclusion of the surrounding features makes them of interest without disrupting the services for the departed.

Bruce
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John R Smith

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #3 on: March 31, 2011, 10:04:40 am »

Bruce

Yes, it's a very sad picture if, like me, you love wooden boats. Here in Cornwall they sit on "legs" or props when the tide is out, but Anovari's starboard leg has broken, so she fell on the boat alongside. When I went back last year, only the keel remained of the crushed boat.

John
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Dave (Isle of Skye)

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #4 on: March 31, 2011, 11:25:00 am »

Hi John,

I do not use a square format camera (could not even dream of affording one with a digital back) and to be honest, I find the square format feels somehow restricting across the image in general, as though I am missing seeing something on the right and left edge, which can sometimes even feel a little claustrophobic to me. However, I do occasionally crop (yes I crop, there I've admitted it) to a square format, if I think the image suits that style. I find some close-up portraits can really work well as a square or very close to square format and also usually with B&W.

Photobloke

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walter.sk

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #5 on: March 31, 2011, 11:36:25 am »

Yes, it is a sad scene.  I also think it looks quite good in the format shown.

Concerning the square format vs 4:3 or 3:2, I have a some thoughts.

1) I think that we tend to look for compositions that fit the aspect ratio we use most often, and do quite well at cropping in the viewfinder to fit the scene to the aspect ratio.

2) Unless we have several cameras with different aspect ratios, we tend, then, to shoot for the frame we have and avoid scenes that would better fit some other aspect ratio.

3)  Since it is impossible to compose in a 2:3 viewfinder, for example, part of a scene that really would work best in a square format, is this not a good reason to use, on occasion, that technique sometimes vilified on this forum, called (pardon the language) Cropping?
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2011, 12:13:57 pm »

I agree with Walter. The format you use most influences the scenes that you photograph. There are a few regulars here on the LuLa forum that post mostly or exclusively square images, and to me those images seem to cry out that any other format would be wrong.

The wooden boats pic makes a very good case for the square format.

In my almost sixty years of photography I have used rectangles almost all the time (both 3:2 and 5:4), and usually horizontal. But when I was using a Mamiya 6x6 several years ago, I found myself quickly learning to look for squares.

Eric
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wolfnowl

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #7 on: March 31, 2011, 01:26:16 pm »

I agree with Walter. The format you use most influences the scenes that you photograph.

<snip>

But when I was using a Mamiya 6x6 several years ago, I found myself quickly learning to look for squares.

Eric

That sounds about right to me!

Mike.
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RSL

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #8 on: March 31, 2011, 04:40:31 pm »

John, I love old boats too in square or any other format, and I very much like your shot of the poor, crushed hull. It may be square but it's got that swing. (That's called a retro expression.)

I'll probably never hear the end of this, but I'm including a picture I made back when I first started working in Photoshop and couldn't resist doing some pretty extensive post-processing modifications. But, as Elliott Erwitt said about once printing sandwiched negatives, "I soon got over it." I call this one "Gossip."
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churly

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #9 on: March 31, 2011, 06:42:31 pm »

John - This is a well composed image that obviously works well in the square format. 

I'm afraid I really don't understand the discussion about formats.  Some compositions work best in square some in other formats.  Why would anyone want to restrict the quality of an image by only shooting in one format or the other.  Sure if you are using a square format camera you will compose to that format.  But it's not quite the same thing for other formats and I certainly wouldn't want to ignore a scene that works best in square just because I'm not shooting square.  So yes that means cropping but the alternative leaves you composing only for the format you shoot.  Now that seems restrictive to me.  To me the objective is to get the best image framed in the best format, not cropping is to place an artificial restriction on your creativity.

Cheers.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #10 on: March 31, 2011, 07:45:48 pm »

John, I love old boats too in square or any other format, and I very much like your shot of the poor, crushed hull. It may be square but it's got that swing. (That's called a retro expression.)

I'll probably never hear the end of this, but I'm including a picture I made back when I first started working in Photoshop and couldn't resist doing some pretty extensive post-processing modifications. But, as Elliott Erwitt said about once printing sandwiched negatives, "I soon got over it." I call this one "Gossip."
Russ,
That is a hilarious image!
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donaldt

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #11 on: April 01, 2011, 12:17:42 am »

it is in fact much more difficult to compose in the 6x6 square then in any rectangular format (4:3 or 3:2)
when I  shot 6x6 I often dont know where to put the subject in the frame
but in a rectangular format it is always safe to do the 1/3 composition (which you cannot do in 6x6)
the golden rule of 1:1.618 almost always work (1/3 on the 4:3 or 3:2 is close enough)
and its fine if you want to break the rule too (or even crop it back into a square format)


nice photos there by the way
the H camera isnt the easiest to use on a portrait composition, or it might just be me
« Last Edit: April 01, 2011, 12:20:40 am by donaldt »
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pegelli

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #12 on: April 01, 2011, 03:59:22 am »

When I was starting in photography I always wanted a 6x6 TLR but never took the jump because the investment in larger tanks and a new enlarger were unsurmountable (I could use the 35 mm film stuff from my father for free, but he wasn't interested in any larger formats). So I've mostly shot rectangular all my life.

Last year in December I participated in another forum challende to only shoot with a 50 mm prime in "week 50" and on top I loaded an extra challenge to shoot for B&W and a square crop. This was a feeble attempt to make up for the fact I never got a TLR when I was a teenager.

I never expected it to be so hard to compose for square (especially in a rectangular viewfinder) but got some ones that were half decent (I think). I also found (just like John) that some subjects lend themselves very well to square but I took a lot of time finding them. Here's a few links to some examples:

       


Btw, I like both boat hull shots very much. John's is well composed and Russ' version is very funny with a great caption.


John, thanks for bringing this up, as it will motivate me to try more square and see what I can get out of it.
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pieter, aka pegelli

John R Smith

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #13 on: April 01, 2011, 04:15:53 am »

Well, thank you all for your thoughtful responses. Those are good examples, Pieter. And I do like your boat picture, Russ, even though it is rather different from your usual style and subject  ;)

Composing for the square is quite difficult, but you do get used to it after a while. The biggest snag with square negatives is that they are so wasteful of printing paper (you can’t buy square paper, obviously, and now with inkjet printing here in Europe you can only get ‘A’ sizes, which are more or less 3:2, not even 10x8). Having said that, a great deal of the time with film I actually framed up intending to crop to a rectangle, which has the advantage that you don’t have to turn a WLF camera on its side for portrait format. I had my viewfinder marked up for both landscape and portrait shots, and usually printed those to something like a 5x4 proportion, which is a bit squarer than 4:3 or 3:2.

The other pretty neat thing you can do with the square is to use it to get some shift for architectural work. With my 50mm lens, I would frame the subject up in the very top part of the frame, ignoring the foreground completely. This means that you can avoid tilting the camera upwards so much, and reduces converging verticals. These shots were printed to 3:2 landscape format with the bottom of the negative cropped right out.

So in many ways the good old 6x6 negative is (or was) a versatile beast, because even with a big (intentional) crop you still had a decent size film area and plenty of IQ. Still, back in the day, there were also quite a few anti-cropping fanatics and followers of HCB, who insisted on printing their 6x6 negatives to include the rebate and prove that they had not cropped. Especially the Hasselblad snobs, of course, because the rebate then included the two little notches which told the world that this photo had been shot on (what was then) the most expensive MF camera you could buy.

Here’s another one which I think is definitely a “square shot”. A most unusual slate double headstone at Withiel.

John
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #14 on: April 01, 2011, 06:54:00 am »

Square rocks!
You can't get more area from a given image circle ...
Cheers
~

John R Smith

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #15 on: April 01, 2011, 07:12:55 am »

Square rocks!
You can't get more area from a given image circle ...
Cheers

Unless, of course, we printed circular pictures . . .

John
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #16 on: April 01, 2011, 10:22:48 am »

Unless, of course, we printed circular pictures . . .

John

I was hoping someone could point that out.
Hexagonal images would also work great for a collage ...

GEOFFREYJAMES

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #17 on: April 01, 2011, 10:31:45 am »

The square format doesn't seem to have inhibited Walker Evans,  Harry Callahan (Water's Edge), Diane Arbus, William Eggleston or recent Lee Friedlander.  When it is used right -- and I am thinking of Arbus here -- you are never really aware that it's a square.  Friedlander's America by Car is an absolutely virtusoso use of the square format and a wide lens -- the Hassy superwide.  I am using square-format cameras for a book on Cuba.  
« Last Edit: April 01, 2011, 10:33:17 am by GEOFFREYJAMES »
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #18 on: April 01, 2011, 01:49:08 pm »

Now finally we can understand the meaning of "Its hip to be square ....."  ;)

jule

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Re: Crushed Boat, Penryn
« Reply #19 on: April 03, 2011, 02:23:37 am »

Now finally we can understand the meaning of "Its hip to be square ....."  ;)

that's hilarious... good one Christoph  ;D ;D

Julie
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