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Homage To The Square
27 August 2015
Instagram's announcement today that it would now accept rectangles other than squares brought a dewy tear to our eye. One in five images uploaded were not really squares, the company confided, just squared up. So it was going with the flow.
JFK Bud & Rose. Manual mode comes in handy with high key subject like this if you know what to meter.
You might have thought that would make us happy, not dewy eyed. We have long championed the unrestricted rectangle. In our camera reviews, we always applauded cameras that offered a choice beyond the native sensor format (3:2 or 4:3) to 16:9 and 1:1. It's just more fun.
But you'll notice that stance argues for the square, which outside the medium format film world (in which almost everyone used to get married), gets little respect. And when such a form as noble as the square gets little respect, our eyes get dewy.
Hence, we can not let the sun set today without paying homage of some kind to the square. And this is ours.
It's a snapshot of Mom's John F. Kennedy rose, a bud and a full flower, shot today at f8.0, 1/1000 second and ISO 200 in Manual mode after metering for the leaves.
Like President Kennedy, Mom and the rose, the square format has been "beloved by many." We count ourselves among them.
And hasten to remind you that you can still upload square format photos to Instagram.