Regular readers will know by now that I’m a big advocate of the square format (see the previous post for some inspiration). Red Ognita approached me a few weeks ago and I liked his work so much that I asked him to take part in an interview. Red is based in Beijing and has some beautiful black and white photos taken in China and other Asian countries. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the days of film the square format was limited to photographers who purchased medium format cameras (such as Hasselblad or Bronica) that produced 6x6cm negatives. You had to decide on which format you wanted to work in before you purchased the camera, and (cropping aside) you were forced to work in the aspect ratio of the cameras that you chose.

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Strange as it may seem, up until last week I hadn’t considered taking any photos of the buildings in Shanghai. I’ve already taken my ‘must-do’ shots – the obligatory photos of the ‘forest’ of skyscrapers (taken from my apartment balcony) and the view of the Pudong skyline from the Bund (both images below). But that was just to get them out of my system; and concentrate on the ‘serious’ business of creating some more original images.

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This year I’ve found myself using the square format more and more. I enjoy the challenge of composing within the square frame and ‘seeing’ images that would work well in the square format. Like the majority of photographers with digital cameras I don’t have a square format camera, so the process of working within the square format involves visualisation at the time I take the photo and cropping in post-processing.

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Last weekend we went to Hangzhou, a city around 180km south-west of Shanghai, by high speed train. It’s quite an experience; Hongqiao railway station in Shanghai is brand new (and enormous) and boarding the train felt more like entering a space ship. It was the smoothest train ride that I’ve ever been on – even at 300 km/h it seemed to be barely moving. We completed the journey in less than an hour.

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