[HN Gopher] Portrait vs. Landscape - more than meets the eye
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Portrait vs. Landscape - more than meets the eye
Author : herodotus
Score : 24 points
Date : 2022-03-20 14:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (billwadge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (billwadge.com)
| jalk wrote:
| I always thought that cinema chose a wide format to suit our
| field of vision which is wider than it is tall. TV simply adopted
| that
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Originally, cinema was square-ish, then TVs came along, and
| cinema needed to be 'better' to get people back into theatres,
| so they went wide, and then wider, and then cinemascope-wide.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Early talkies mostly used the Academy ratio which is not very
| wide.
|
| The introduction of television encouraged the movies to go
| colour as standard.
|
| The introduction of colour tv encouraged the movies to go
| widescreen as standard.
|
| I wish films and television dramas would still consider the
| Academy ratio (or 4:3) (and black and white!). I see many
| productions that I don't think really use widescreen
| effectively. In any case, different ratios suit different
| material.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Oh, and I wish someone would sell widescreen televisions with
| built-in curtains that automatically move according to the
| ratio.
|
| And please stop chopping bits off old tv shows to 'make them
| widescreen'. It was awful seeing pan-and-scanned movies on tv
| in the old days, please don't do the same thing in reverse.
| Zak wrote:
| The author seems to be advocating the photographic composition
| technique of filling most of the frame with the primary subject
| without discussing photographic composition in general. This is a
| standard approach for _portraits_ , which are typically of humans
| posed in a sitting or standing position such that they're taller
| than they are wide. The term "portrait orientation" comes from
| this fact and indeed, the author's example of the Mona Lisa is a
| portrait.
|
| It's no surprise that humans are more interested in portraits of
| humans than images of most anything else; we're a social species.
| A Google image search for "most famous photograph" also returned
| a portrait as the first result: Afghan Girl. Interestingly the
| first result for "most famous painting" is a squarish landscape:
| Starry Night. (Standard disclaimer about this not being a
| scientific method goes here)
|
| Ultimately, I don't think the author has done his homework here
| because he doesn't address elements of photographic composition
| beyond "fill the frame" even to dismiss them. I also disagree
| with his claim that "nowadays we're surrounded by rigid landscape
| screens". Laptop PCs have those, but phones and tablets can be
| freely rotated and are most commonly used in a portrait
| orientation. Rotating mounts for desktop displays are very
| common, though it's rare I see anyone else's in anything but
| landscape.
| mkaic wrote:
| Portrait vs. Landscape has always been an interesting debate to
| me, especially in the context of _filmmaking_ , a space where,
| until the advent of TikTok, basically everyone scoffed at the
| idea of _cinema_ being vertical -- because, well, physical cinema
| screens are landscape! But cinema screens are no longer the
| dominant place people go for movie entertainment -- they watch
| instead on their smartphones, where they can choose either
| orientation as they please. This has led to the dawn of vertical
| cinema, something I find very exciting. I don 't know if there
| will ever be vertical movie theaters (I personally doubt it), but
| that doesn't mean that there can't be vertical movies that are
| ever bit as artistically valid and "sophisticated" as their
| horizontal counterparts!
|
| I've noticed quite a bit of gatekeeping around this topic in
| filmmaking circles -- people love to act as though horizontal is
| an innately superior format somehow, and that vertical is only
| suitable for childish, amateur productions. I think that's a
| rather myopic take though that doesn't consider the many factors
| that go into a cinematic viewing experience!
| antiterra wrote:
| Plenty of medium format cameras used square shaped areas of film
| negative and you were meant to adjust the aspect by cropping.
| Often the viewfinder would provide guides for both orientations.
|
| Calling a more vertical representation 'portrait mode' when
| speaking of stone tablets or bibles is a bit ridiculous. Also
| ridiculous is the casual hand waving survey of historic mediums
| and deciding that 'portrait mode' reigned large. There are
| scrolls, frescos, cave paintings, woven works and more that are
| wider than they are tall. Further, convoluting what is
| comfortable to look at with full detail for reading versus what
| replicates the human field of vision is as contrived as the smug
| reference of anyone who does otherwise as a 'newbie.'
|
| A portrait mode image is a decision, and it should be a decision
| made with intent. It is both a technical and artistic choice and
| if a 'newbie' decides to only shoot landscape, they aren't
| somehow disappointingly restricted.
|
| Also, if you want to landscape the Mona Lisa, you'd do better to
| add to the width than to chop off the height.
| mig39 wrote:
| TikTok being predominantly portrait-mode is definitely changing
| the tide for video. And having vertical phones means a majority
| of casual phone photos are probably portrait these days.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I'm hoping that this all converges into video not having an
| "orientation". Currently there's a lot of good technical
| reasons behind this, but as far as the viewer is concerned,
| they're not always able to watch videos that suit their viewing
| preference, and authors have to pick beforehand.
|
| Videos have been an unnecessarily rigid experience for some
| reason. For example, one can't typically watch a video while
| zoomed in and pan around the same way one can to when viewing
| photos... Because reasons?
| mkaic wrote:
| Agreed. I think portrait as a format opens up some cool
| compositional ideas, too, especially when trying to convey a
| sense of distance in city areas with lots of converging
| parallel lines.
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