Happy halloween everyone! As y’all surely know, I talk about composition all the time, and this post is no exception 🙂 I made the coolest looking brownie graveyard just in time for Halloween and needed to Instagram my creation:
And I went through exactly 25 takes of the pan before I could decide on this shot. I changed lighting, I turned my phone upside down to try a different angle, I threw out the Oreo ghost that was behind the center tombstone, and thoroughly frustrated with my results, I ate some brownie and had to figure out how to hide the missing brownie from my picture.
I ran through all these different types of edits until I realized what my problem was. Because I wanted to Instagram my photo, I had kept my phone’s settings to Square. A 1:1 aspect ratio that couldn’t accommodate three spread-out Milano gravestones with chocolate sauce writing.
Not working
So I tried cropping the photos into rectangles. Photography tip of the day? Think outside of the 1:1 box! Try different aspect ratios that work better with your subjects. Elongate for spread-out images, tighten for tall, vertical images, and play around with cropping. If you do want to use 1:1, try it out with symmetrical images or very subject-focused ones. Instagram, thankfully, doesn’t limit you to the box anymore!
Happy un-boxing!
Love,
Samah
