When Square is Hip

When I was a teenager if someone wasn't hip, cool, groovy - we'd say they were (and we'd make a hand sign) L7 or square. Well Huey Lewis and the News once sang "It's hip to be square" and sometimes, it is.

The Yashicamat 124G

One of the earliest medium format cameras was a "square" format, 2"x2" negatives. The first medium format camera I bought was a 2&1/4 Yashicamat 124G. Shooting square made you have to pre-visualize more. That meant, as Ansel Adams put it "is where the photographer can see the final print before the image has been captured" or years later as Stephen Covey would frame it, "to see the end from the beginning."

Both concepts, whether in photography or life, are very useful.

Now digital format isn't square, it uses a rectangular 3:2 aspect ratio, versus 2:2 aspect ratio. But I can crop an image to a square format and by doing so often remove items on the sides of the subject and eliminate visual distractions.

Here's a sample of digital creations cropped square. Tell me what you think.

By cropping the image this way the visual emphasis is on the car and that Vintage Goods sign.

An old funeral parlor, and by cropping out the surrounding neighborhood we focus, literally, on the parlor.

By isolating the house, in this square format, all distractions are removed.

At one time this was a barber shop. Here the square format not only eliminates distractions but follows the lines of the building.

Visually, this was a very “busy” neighborhood, but by cropping it square the visual distractions were reduced.

The John Henderson Core Mausoleum. Presenting it in this format brings our focus to the mausoleum, not the cemetery.

The signage on the side reads Buddy's Place. There were a lot of visual distractions that were removed just by cropping.

A wonderful old home, and made even more impressive in this format, where unnecessary elements have been cropped out.