With today’s cameras, be it the regular 35mm or a digital model, doing almost everything for the photographer from focussing to determining the correct exposure, the only thing left for the photographer to do is composition. The amazing technology in today's cameras can almost everything else, expect point in the right place.
In this new digital world, and with people enjoying the making of DVD movies - putting your photographs together to music - one of the standard practices in composition is eliminated. What was once a given rule is now changed because of the format of television. The DVD movie works so much better with horizontal images, rather than vertical ones with black spaces on the side.
The rule used to be: If it’s taller than it was wide, it’s a vertical. If the subject was wider than it was high, it's a horizontal format. Break this rule and you usually lost points in any competitions the camera club had. With the DVD player putting your efforts onto a bigger screen than your computer, verticals are out. The horizontals fit the screens dimensions, so people aren’t looking for that image that should have been a vertical.
However, if you hope to have your images published in magazines or books. vertical are more readily accepted than horizontals because of the pages dimensions. It is just a case of where you are going with you photography. And sometimes, it's best to stick to the old rule.
This shot of a Hoary Marmot checking things out just wouldn't work in an horizontal format. It may not make for good viewing on the television, but then again, that's not why it was taken.
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