Your assignment this week, should you choose to accept it, is to create an image cropped to an extreme aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio is a way of describing the shape of an image. Specifically, it is the ratio of an image’s width to its height. The aspect ratio is represented by two numbers separated by a colon, such as W:H. You can think of this as, “For every W units of width, the image will have H units of height.” If you’ve ever printed pictures to hang in frames on your walls, you’ve probably dealt with aspect ratios without giving it a second thought. An 8×10 portrait, for example, is eight inches wide by 10 inches high. As an aspect ratio, that works out to 4:5.

Consider the following images, which show the same basic composition cropped to 3:2, 4:3, and 16:9 aspect ratios.

All three crops look similar, but on a close inspection you’ll find a few details cropped out around the edges in the 4:3 and 16:9 versions, compared to the original 3:2—perhaps a little unfortunate, but not a huge loss with this particular image.

But back to the point of this week’s challenge, what if you took that same image and cropped it much more severely, perhaps as much as a 4:1 aspect?

Not every image lends itself to such an extreme aspect ratio crop. In this aspect, even though the image seems wider, much of the sky and its reflection in the river are lost, making the whole composition feel more closed in.

On the other hand, with careful composition and framing, an extreme aspect ratio crop can emphasize the size and scope of your subject: