Are square photographs as bad as square books?

boing
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[Read the post]

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If it’s a square, how do I know whether or not to whine about portrait mode?

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Just remember that the only acceptable format is the one dictated by movie-theater-vs-television competition.

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I will always love the square format and tend to make most of my photographic art using that (quick shameless plug: crackthelens.com). I think it’s because I’ve wanted to make album covers since I was in my teens.

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Square format can be fantastic, if you choose to shoot in that format. The problem lies in trying to take your existing photos and put them on Instagram - if you didn’t take it in square format originally, deciding what to crop out (or ending up with one of those “post full image to instagram” apps) is was a bit of a pain.

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Well, rhombus is certainly the funnest to say…

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Well I’m a fan of the Cirkut panorama that they used for the group photo of my Junior High class…A couple of hundred kids and every face is clear enough to be recognizable. Edited to add: It’s about 10’x21"

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Circle, definitely.

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Square photos are fine. Remember Polaroid? Square worked for them for 60+ years. Like the Polaroids Instagram was mimicking square added to the charm I think. I don’t really care though, there are more important issues. Like vertical video, why hasn’t somebody done something about that.

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Let’s see how many people say circle, eh, @codinghorror?

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Everyone can be Diane Arbus on instragram.

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ISTR that early Kodak photos (back when you mailed in the entire camera) came in a round frame because of the poor lenses of the early Brownie cameras…

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Polaroid worked because one was composing as a square.

[Bugger; WearySky already said that. Sorry.]

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Square is an excellent shape for avatars. It’s a pity they’re not allowed anymore.
sigh

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Dammit it maxes out vertically at 8x10 proportions. 35mm, which is what dSLRs are designed on, is 8x12. :frowning:

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I get a fair amount of compliments on the pics I post to Facebook.

I just use an iPhone + Camera Awesome app.

Then I crop most everything to square.

I also apply the “Awesomize” filter about 8 out of 10 times, cranking it down just a notch from the standard setting as it is oversaturated.

I like square for sharing on Facebook for a couple of reasons - 1 is that generally most snapshots I take need a bit of cropping, and for whatever reason, a square crop on the standard rectangle usually is just the right amount of croppage.

2 is that I think it views well on most people’s phones.

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add enough whitespace and they are…

of course, you’ll end up rather diminutive, but square…

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  1. Install stylish

  2. Create new style for bbs.boingboing.net

    @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
    @-moz-document domain(“bbs.boingboing.net”) {
    img.avatar {border-radius: 0;}
    }

  3. Revel in all the soothing squares.

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I’ve always been square.
And diminutive.

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Then it only shows up for myself and those who install that style.
Regular users don’t get to see the beautiful squareness.
So it’s only half a solution really.

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