Art of Photography: Vertical and Horizontal Frames

When taking photographs many people forget that you can and should look for opportunities to shoot in both landscape and portrait. There are certain situations where portrait photography could alter the structure of the photograph and as such many photo opportunities may be over looked.
This next exercise illustrates this process.

f/9-1/160-100-17mm

Shooting here the scene tends to work best in landscape mode, which is usually more appeals to the human eye.

f14-1/125-100-17mm

f/14-1/80-100-17mm

The horizon here plays a big part and illustrates that again shooting in landscape is more appealing.

f/14-1/400-800-250mm

f/14-1/400-500-250mm

With the addition of detail below the horizon in the mud flaps and re-positioning the horizon line to the top of the frame the portrait photograph has surpassed the original in this instance.

f/16-1/40-250-17mm

f/16-1/30-250-19mm

Landscape photo is more appealing, as the main focus of the photo is the reeds on the edge of the lake.

f/22-1/30-320-17mm

f/22-1/30-250-17mm

The expanses of the flowers and position of the horizon line makes the landscape photograph more appealing.

f/4-1/320-100-55mm

f/4-1/400-100-55mm

The landscape photo here is fairly compact, gives nice details towards the edge of the photo, whereas the portrait photo allows more details on the foreground and the tree in back is now completely visible. In this instance I prefer the portrait photo.

f/4-1/320-100-55mm

f/4-1/250-100-55mm

The additional detail of the tree in the portrait photo makes this more appealing. On reflection the photo could have been taken higher so that the flowers appear at the base of the tree and photo.

f/4-1/200-100-17mm

f/4-1/320-100-17mm

Where the landscape photo shows more of the fountain the portrait allows us to see that the mouth of the gargoyle statue is part of the complete fountain.