The square format

The square format has long held a fascination for me, encouraged as I was by the early photographs my father took using an old Rolliecord. My Dad used transparency film exclusively, and the final images were diffused with a beautiful light that now conjures up the nostalgia of my childhood.

I later managed to buy an old Rolleiflex of my own and continued recording the world as a square. It's been said before, but this type of camera often seemed to lend itself to a gentler kind of photography. Looking through the waist high viewfinder is almost like bowing to the subject, and certainly having only 12 pictures per roll of film tended to make for a more considered photograph. It can seem like a less ‘aggressive’ approach to photography.

As an interesting aside a book I am reading at the moment (and one that I would recommend), is ‘Little Book of Contemplative Photography’ by Howard Zehr. The author addresses the idea of ‘photographer as aggressor’ and suggests that a waist-level finder can make it easier to “imagine receiving rather than taking the image.”

I'm not completely sure why I bought the Rolleiflex in the first place, but suspect it was initially to try to capture the same feeling in my photographs as my Dad had in his. I didn't succeed (and perhaps that was an early lesson in the futility of trying to copy a style of photography rather than developing your own), but the attraction of the square format continued when I moved onto digital cameras, particularly when used with digital viewfinders that could be set to portray a square image on a tilted viewfinder. I used to use my Panasonic GH1 in this way…

… as well as more recently my Panasonic FZ1000, now regretably sold.

Composition

I have always thought that rules of composition only get you so far, but there is a great deal of information out there on composing using the square format, a particularly good one can be found on Erik Kim's photography blog which also showcases the talent of a number of renowned photographers using the square format including Lee Friedlander. I would also recommend an excellent overview of the square format by Wim van Velzen, whose article “Square Scotland” first appeared in the German magazine NaturFoto in May 2003. You can enjoy the article and the excellent photographs at Mr Velzen's site, I particularly admire his evening photograph of Glen Rosa.

My current approach

My current cameras are a Nikon DSLR and the camera on my iPhone, both of which I use regularly to create square images. With the Nikon, unlike the ease of use of an electronic viewfinder which can be changed to square view, I use gridlines in the viewfinder that allows me to see compose for a square. I also use the iPhone and simply use the square option in the camera app.

In addition (and in the interests of full disclosure) I also post-crop to a square when I think it benefits the final image (and yes, I know that some regard this as cheating!).

Please   email me should you have a comment or query relating to this post.

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