Turn baby turn

One thing that snappers often ask me is “when do you turn your images”?

There is no one answer, but it is almost certainly “more often than you do”. I turn my picture diagonally when:

  • I think it makes a nice composition
  • I want to turn diagonals into horizontals and verticals
  • I simply want to fit more in
  • I want to introduce a more dynamic feel

Here’s a few recent examples:

So while for the sake of your viewers’ stomachs I would not recommend you turn for every picture, I do think we could all do this a lot more than we do today. For that professional look.. or just to get everything into the picture. Which still gives it that professional look.

8 thoughts on “Turn baby turn

  1. For these shots did you turn the camera when you took the photos or crop then later?

    Personally I do not like the turned look but i see your point.

    How do you define “that professional look”?

  2. I turn the camera.

    Matter of taste – but as for professional: Well, look a the chef in the bottom picture. That is a professional picture by virtue of the fact that I shot it for pay, of course. But it is also not badly composed. Balanced nicely.

    Non-Euclidian Photography, you might call it. Why should a triangle add up to 180 degrees? When you let go of these convention (in our case, the one that says that convention that horizons must be horizontal) you get what Einstein got (to drop another name): a whole new way of seeing the world just by not assuming the old. You can assume compositional rules in a whole new way.

  3. Seeing the turned images together does make me feel a but woozy so my first reaction was “I don’t like it, hold the camera straight for heaven’s sake!” “Doesn’t the 7D have an alignment tool?”

    But I think if I looked at the pictures alone on the screen or as part of a collection of rectilinear ones I’d be more sympathetic.

    I’ll try it next time I go out.

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