Composition in photography is often seen as a pure technical detail. Often considered as less important than framing (the art of what’s inside and outside the frame), timing (the art of choosing the decisive moment to click the shutter) or the choice of film (BW, color), composition is nonetheless capable of conveying the right message if properly mastered.
Defined as the technique to set up and arrange the elements in the frame, there are at least dozens of different compositional schemes (thirds, golden ratio, diagonal, triangular, symmetrical…) as well as ways to avoid them. Although I think I compose things more or less in the same frame regardless of the film format, I’ve always wondered whether my photos convey a different message if they are taken in 6×6, 6×7 or 35mm format. The first two formats in particular are the ones I am more interested in, as I shoot almost every portrait within these two classic options. My stats tell me that I’ve used the 6×6 format roughly 60% of the time, leaving the 6×7 to a mere 40%…but what does it mean? Can I say that I prefer the first over the second? Is it just a matter of economy (12 shots per roll vs 10 shots per roll – and considering the price of film these days, these things count!)? Let’s find out.
6×6: the elegant square
The square format is often associated with timeless elegance and harmony. Tons of ink has been used to describe the philosophical purity of its geometry and I am certainly biased when I use my 6×6 cameras to compose as if the moment was somehow solemn, even formal. That does not mean the photos are static or rigid, but in a way the format reminds me of the introspection look of Richard Avedon or Irving Penn or even Anton Corbjin photos and I feel like I owe more respect to the sitter in front of my lens.
6×7: the tension is here
A mere 15% increase in one dimension cannot make such a difference, can it? All in all, you just add a 1cm strip, how can things be so wildly different? Well in reality things are different when you choose 6×7: that extra space allows you to introduce the orientation variable (horizontal vs vertical) and to my eyes it gives the photo a touch of tension that is more controlled in 6×6. Peter Lindbergh, Herb Ritts, Araki all used the 6×7 format and I could not imagine them using anything else. To be fair I could include Avedon in this category as well for his large format 8×10 work (which is very close to the 6×7 ratio)
My philosophy (or lack thereof)
I tend to always carry two cameras for my portrait sessions, a Hasselblad for the 6×6 and either a Pentax67 or a Mamiya RZ67 for the…you guessed it…6×7 format. The reason is purely for security reasons: the 6×7 cameras are electronic marvels and as such they tend to fail and break, as it happened to me in the past; having a Hasselblad which is a total mechanical wonder is a warranty that if anything goes wrong, I can still have some shots.
That said I always felt that I used the two format to take different photos, but I never had the occasion to prove it. With that idea in mind I recently decided to take exactly the same pictures on a recent shooting in order to compare the results afterwards and see if my intuition was right. I came to the conclusion that…I don’t know! There are reasons why I sometimes choose one format over the other, but those reasons are more intuitions than weighted thoughts.
If I really need to give a post-shooting explanation, I can see that the images where I wanted to convey a sense of intimacy or something that comes from deep inside, I tend to prefer the square format (as you can see on the images on the right column) while in those cases where I want to share a bold presence I prefer the 6×7 option (as in the center column). The most clear example is probably the images on the left column, which share an almost identical framing and composition yet in the square format the model is directing all her body within herself, looking down to the hourglass, while in the 6×7 shot she is more open to the outer world.
And you, what do you think? How do you choose your format?
davide rizzo photography 