Some time ago I began to realise the importance and impact of frame format on an image or ones perception of the image. For a while now I have been drawn to the square format as one which feels natural to me and in which I ‘see’ a lot of images. To me, a square format doesn’t force the composition, all sides are equal and so more emphasis needs to be placed on the composition within. Other frame formats, 4:3, 3:2, 3:1, etc, really impact your perception of the photograph, subliminally dictating the composition by forcing you to use leading lines going to the corners of the frame and drawing the eye up through the picture regardless of the picture content. This may be good when used well but it is dictating how the composition should be and forces you to follow somewhat; when viewing the photo it defines or dictates what you are expecting to see and instills that pre-judgment of how the image should be.

I’m not keen to be dictated to in this way and that enforced pre-judgement prevents proper learning and understanding of the image content (by the viewer also) and as the photographer, pressurises you to conform to the norm and inhibits your experimentation and development of individualism and style. The more square the format therefore, the more free I think is the composition, or at least your licence to compose. I think its actually harder to compose a square format image because you don’t have the ‘dictatorial guidance’ of the frame edges driving the composition.

There are analogies with the use of the 50mm focal length. Whilst perusing some Ansel Adams images, I was drawn to his shot of Alfred Stieglitz with its beautiful side-lighting and the subjects warm smile. Looking at the accompanying text it struck me that this shot was taken with a 35mm camera and a ’50mm Zeiss tessar lens’. Although taken using a ‘boring’ focal length this image is far from boring. It is a relaxed, gentle, warm-smiling photograph which feels at ease with itself and with you the viewer. It puts the viewer at ease looking at this and makes you want to say ‘Hi, how are you?’ because of Alfred’s warm, welcoming smile.

It dawned on me that 50mm as a focal length is ‘boring’ because it doesn’t play with perspective and use this to introduce or force a composition in the picture like a wide-angle lens would. In one sense adding dynamism to the image, the forced perspective introduced by a wide-angle lens is also forcing something to happen in the image, to a subject that might not otherwise be interesting. In the same way that the frame format dictates the composition of the image, the lens focal length also plays a major part in trying to add that ‘wow factor’ to the photo that in truth might not really be there in the subject matter of the image.

So it seems that the skill in achieving a great image with a 50mm lens is the same as using a square format. Both give no force or tension to the image which dictates to the viewer what they should feel or see. For both, the photographer is required to focus on the content of the image and make the image memorable because the subject, composition or preferably both (and lighting too) are beautiful and memorable in their own right, not reliant on the frame format or focal length to add anything to the image to get it over that line from average snap or mediocre effort to memorable image.

Perhaps then the challenge is to use the 50mm and square format to make memorable images; to learn how to make memorable images with interesting and beautiful subjects, beautifully composed.

Something worth trying.