I’ve never been much of a fan of social media. My Facebook is dormant, I’m not on TikTok or X, and my Instagram accounts are best described as lackadaisical, to say the least, although I’m certainly not immune to doomscrolling.
My point is, I’m not the kind of photographer who captures photographs with social media in mind. I just kind of do my thing and, ever so often, I decide to dump a few images on ‘The Gram’.
This context is important, because it makes what I’m about to say next all the more interesting. Despite being a relatively light social media user among my photography peers, I’ve noticed that I’m shooting vertically more. A lot more.
A vertical trend
This was compounded when I took the Nikon Z5IIC out for a spin the other weekend during my review. Now, if you’ve never reviewed a camera before, capturing nice images is very difficult. You don’t tend to have the camera for long, so elaborate shoots and waiting for optimum weather are rarely an option.
Even so, I was relatively pleased with the street shots I managed to bag. Hardly award-winning, but a solid little collection with which to illustrate the article. It was only when I was inputting them into said article as a collection, though, that I realized they were nearly all in portrait orientation.
This prompted me to take a look back at other recent shoots, whereupon I noticed a bit of a trend.
Don’t get me wrong, this does depend on the genre. My motorsport photos are almost exclusively landscape-oriented, while my wildlife images are weighted that way, too. But for everything else, especially street, I’m tilting the camera.
Unintentionally unintentional
I’m not saying that shooting vertically is a problem. Far from it. Some of the most incredible photographs I have ever seen have been in portrait orientation. And some of my favorite photographers shoot plenty of vertical images. I think what I found surprising about all this was how it had seemingly just crept up on me – and how oblivious I was to it all.
We all like to think, as photographers, that we’re being entirely intentional. And that’s the goal, right? To become good enough that every facet of a photograph is an intentional decision. But what I’m finding when I’m shooting vertically is that I’m often doing it because it’s easier.
Which is not to say that outstanding vertical compositions are any harder or easier to capture than landscape ones, but if you’re simply out and about taking photos, a landscape-orientation photo can take a little more planning. Why? Because there’s more to fit into the frame.
When you’re shooting vertically, it’s easy to end up with copious amounts of floor and sky. For minimalist landscapes this can work really well, but for standard travel and street photography it’s generally not so good. An easy workaround, then, is to simply get closer to your subject. Fill the frame, if you will.
An awful lot of subjects are tall and thin. People, arches, street lamps, doorways, phone boxes – you get the picture. Shoot vertically and you can get a passable photo by simply getting closer. And while you can use this technique when shooting in landscape orientation, I’d argue that it’s harder.
You either still end up with dead space on either side of your subject or, if you don’t have a long enough lens, have to get uncomfortably close. So not only do I think social media has put vertical compositions into my head, but I now feel like I’m leaning on them as an easier workaround.
The age of the social media short has made us all so much more exposed to vertical-orientation media that I believe I’ve simply become predisposed to that style of composition.
And before I sound too much like a grumpy aging photographer, maybe the same could be said about the landscape-orientation era. I’m sure it was similarly a byproduct of landscape-orientation billboards, magazine spreads, shop windows and television screens.
Maybe my photography just isn’t as intentional as I’d like to think…
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