Liberate your perspective!

By Tom Coyner

Everyone seems to be photographing these days, even if their photos are limited to selfies and pictures of friends and family. Particularly with the ease and economy of digital photography, people are becoming increasingly creative. Failures are inexpensive and goofs are readily apparent.

At the same time, people tend to confine their creativity to “staying within the box” literally and figuratively. In the first case, most people confine their images’ dimensions to what they can see within their viewfinders or their LCD screens.

Some people experiment with panoramas -- and this is great. However, too often panoramas are restricted to giant landscape vistas. Panoramas can be often more effectively used within smaller spaces, such as neighborhoods or even a single room. Unfortunately, we remain pretty much conforming more or less to the aspect ratio of 35mm film negatives and slides when in fact most of us no longer even use film.

But when I mention a “panorama,” most likely you will think of an image that is much wider than tall, since that is almost always the way we view panorama images. That may seem natural, since we tend to look much more left and right than up and down. That is simply habit. But there is physically much more up and down in the universe. So why not try photographing vertical panoramas?

One of the answers to “Why not?” in this online digital age is that social media websites are more elastic horizontal than vertical. Yet that should not be the reason for not trying vertical panoramas. Furthermore, panoramas of any sort can be made by taking a “normal” photograph and then cropping it down into panoramic dimensions.

Below are some of my panoramas -- horizontal and vertical. In the case of the latter, I am involved in a project to capture some of the wonders of Seoul’s modern architecture by taking pictures of buildings reflected in the windows of other buildings. In most cases, that requires me to shoot and crop vertically, in which case I’m really shooting out of the “35mm format box.” I often use a wide-angle lens and later crop the image.

When shooting vertically in claustrophobic cities, I have to adjust for “key stoning,” which is the look resulting from correcting images where nearby tall building first seem to fall backward.

Within my computer, I can have the images fall forward, returning to their natural upright position. But in doing so, the picture’s dimensions “keystone,” where the top of the picture is much wider than the bottom. In such cases, I have to crop so that the left and right sides are parallel to each other. Just as important, we should consider cropping any image -- vertically or horizontally.

Most importantly, I’m creating unusual images in two ways. First, I’m focusing on the reflected building rather than simply the buildings serving as mirrors. And second, I’m creating unusual vertical panoramas. Through these kinds of exercises, I try to liberate my usual perspective in more than one way.