30 Days with the Fuji X100F: Day 28

I went on a long photo walk this afternoon, and I shot in the 1:1 crop setting for almost the whole walk. I mentioned earlier in this series how I’ve opened up to shooting in different aspect ratios recently. When I was starting out, this wasn’t even an option that was on my radar. I had my hands full with figuring out what this whole “exposure triangle” was. What the hell is ISO anyways?

But as I’ve gotten more familiar with these fundamental elements…or rather, automatic with these elements…it’s opened up another dimension of creativity. If you’re totally solid with the basics, you can start playing around with elements on the fringes. If you don’t have to think too much about depth of field, you can start playing around with things like aspect ratios. It’s really fun to be in this phase…I’m learning about how these new aspects of photography (get it? aspects…aspect ratios…heh heh) while also having a strong enough understanding of the basics to be able to focus primarily on the artistic components and not on the technicals.

Today’s photo is one that I don’t know I would have taken if I was shooting in a 3:2 aspect ratio. Going landscape would have included too many distractions on the periphery and going portrait would have incorporated too many tracks or too much sky. But the 1:1 aspect ratio works perfectly for this image! Setting this as my pre-set aspect ratio when going out to shoot unleashed some creativity and allowed me to make an image that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I’ve talked a lot about how much I love shooting film over the last year, but things like setting your aspect ratio prior to going on your photo walk are where digital has a really special edge over film…