The World Is Horizontal

Stop letting your iPhone reframe your life

I was at a speaking gig in Ohio last week when I ran into Nick Kelsh.

Nick is something of a fixture at The Photo Managers’ annual conference; the photographer of record documenting speakers, attendees, and event goings-on. He’s always dashing somewhere or other, herding people into a composition, or lurking behind his camera at the back of the audience.

Nick is more than a photographer, though, he’s a walking cause. He wants everyone to love photography as much as he does, so every group photo op becomes a lesson. And he exudes such enthusiasm that you can’t help but follow along. I’ve never taken one of his photo courses, but I bet they’re awesome.

When I first saw him this year, in the shadows of the speakers’ platform, he looked different. More mobile. Without the baggage of a couple big cameras hanging off him. And that was it. He shot the entire 4-day conference with his iPhone. Everything from random candids of attendees to a group shot of the entire assembly.

And along with the change in hardware, came a micro-lesson at every group photo I saw him make.

“When you take a picture, turn your iPhone,” he would say. “The world is horizontal.”

It never occurred to me that the iPhone is changing our view of the world.

Cameras naturally take pictures in a horizontal format. The image is wider than it is tall. Since I was knee-high to a developer tray that was the composition of choice. Landscapes need breadth to, well, look like landscapes. If shot vertically - more tall than wide - your landscape becomes a mountain. Or a tree. Or a disconnected building. Imagine viewing a tropical beach from about ten feet inside the open door of your vacation bungalow. You see one colorful beach umbrella instead of thirty. Who would know?

Until mobile phones, pretty much all photography was based on a horizontal/landscape format, with vertical being the creative exception for portraits, giraffe close-ups, and the Eiffel Tower.

All of which seems a little fussy until you realize that over 90 percent of pictures are now taken on mobile phones. Devices that naturally fit your hand in a vertical position. For one-handed photos vertical is almost a must; taking horizontal photos and videos requires two hands and a deliberate effort. What was natural with a camera is foreign with a mobile phone.

And therein lies the rub.

Because it’s likely that the majority of those 90%+ photos were taken by people who never held a “real” camera in their life, or had formal photography training. Another decade or so, and the percentage will be even greater. What happens when a generation of photographers who grew up in the vertical world of iPhones and Instagram creates the world’s art? It will probably be amazing, but certainly different.

You could fit more pictures on the wall.

Regardless, the point is to understand that good photography is all about what you choose to include and what you don’t. It should be decided by you, not the device. Subject matter over convenience. And Nick is right. The world is horizontal, so a fair number of the photos we take should be horizontal too, if we want to be true to the world we experience.

Here are a couple points to remember.

Mobile photography can be a creative medium or a documentary record.

Creative photos have no rules. This is your artistic playground. Vertical, horizontal, diagonal; it’s all fair game.

Documenting your life/experience/relationships is worth more consideration though. Stories. People. Places.

Horizontal framing usually gives context. Vertical narrows your attention to what’s right in front. Horizontal honors our habit of looking side to side. Vertical, not so much.

But then there’s those giraffes.

The point is to be aware. How we frame our photos - what we choose to keep in the picture and what we keep out - reflects how we see the world around us. And as much as I love my iPhone, I don’t want it deciding that for me.

Choose to choose.

If you want to understand more about framing your pictures, I highly recommend watching Nick’s video about the nuances of shooting horizontal or vertical with your iPhone.