Square format has always been (or should I say "used to be"?) synonym of fine art photography, the product of medium format film cameras accessible only to serious photographers. With the advent of digital, square became just another crop option. But it is a quite interesting option!
My experiments with square format actually started in the days of film, when I bought an used Yashica Mat-124 G, a 6x6 twin lens reflex. Even though the camera was fun to use (and a great conversation piece), I never ran more than half a dozen film rolls through it. But I found interesting the way how the elements in an image could be neatly arranged on a square frame.
Recently, a few posts by Bruce Robbins on his blog made me start thinking about square format again. Live View on the E-P2 can be configured to display a square crop. If one is shooting RAW, the entire 4:3 image is stored, so one can adjust the cropping later on. So I gave it a try, and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. It is making me think what makes a composition work, before I actually press the shutter.
Here are a few shots taken at the garden of Serralves Museum, in Porto. I think I'll be shooting square for a while longer.
Olympus E-P2 + Panasonic Lumix 20/1.7
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