Are our composition tastes changing?

[John]

Here's one for discussion. Styles come and go, but recently I've noticed some photographers complaining that even ultra-wide lenses looked too "cramped" and I was wondering how this could be. Just maybe we are no longer used to looking at 4:3 images and have become attuned to our 16:9 TV sets?

This raises the possibility that we might achieve a subconcious advantage if we presented our images as more like the 16:9 widescreen proportions and composed them accordingly.

What do you think?

[John Higham]

Just a quick comment.
In two separate competitions recently the judges have said: - "This image would look better in horizontal letterbox format, to reduce the weak areas". So this may be the start of something big, or something long in this case.

[PhilipHowe]

John, I completely agree. I never try to take photos of landscapes, simply because when you get home and look at them, it didn't look like that. I know you can take a panorama and stitch it together, which comes closer, but the question is how to present that.

Unless you can print a 12' x 1', then you won't remeber it as it you have displayed it.

Food for thought.