Waterfall and Pond. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A waterfall empties into a small pool, Portland Japanese Garden.
This is a portrait-orientation photograph of the same subject I recently posted in landscape orientation — a beautiful and quite peaceful scene from the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon.
With some subjects I go ahead and photograph both waits — vertical and horizontal — for several reasons. My first impressions of a subject while I’m on the scene don’t always turn out to be the rest ones, and sometimes I discover later on that a compositional option I had dismissed actually works well. So I recognize that it is possible that a scene that seems to work in landscape mode may turn out to work in portrait mode. On top of that, and thinking in practical terms, sometimes a particular usage of a photograph demands one or the other orientation, and I’d like to be able to offer both options. In this case, the vertical orientation may emphasize the verticality of the waterfall a bit more than the alternative view.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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