Horizontal or Vertical Frame ?

As much as you may prefer a horizontal shot over a vertical, or vice versa, shoot a subject both ways. By doing so, you offer a client—or a book or magazine publisher—an important choice.

In the case of publishing, your photograph may fit into available space on a page one way. Limiting your format options may limit the use of your images. What’s more, you may change your mind after the shoot on which generates the better composition.

And who knows? An art director may want to use your photograph for a horizontal or vertical poster. How cool! Here, too, you don’t want to miss out on a sale because your image does not fit the client’s specifications.

By the way, if you only have a horizontal and the client wants a vertical, don’t panic. With the resolution of today’s cameras, it’s easy to crop a horizontal image vertically; but you may not have exactly the same ratio that a vertical image offers.

As long as we are talking about clients, check out the open space in these two photographs; this is the space around the faces. Art directors like open space in a photograph because they often need to place type on a photograph. And as much as you may not like anyone messing with your photographs, you gotta go with the flow if you want to make it in the highly competitive world of professional studio photography.