2022 Weekly Photo Challenge
Week 9: Square Crop
In a weekly challenge post last year, we looked at cropping your photos to extreme aspect ratios, creating either really, really wide , or tall & skinny images. This week, we’ll go to the other end of the spectrum. Your assignment this week, should you choose to accept it, is to create an image cropped to a square (1:1) aspect ratio.
You might be thinking, “Square crop. That’s easy. So where’s the challenge?” And on the surface, this is a fairly simple challenge, technically speaking. Just about every photo editing app out there lets you crop your images, and I’d be surprised if you found one that doesn’t include a square/1:1 crop option.
But there’s much more to this challenge than just snapping a pic and applying a square crop. Your job as a photographer is to make your images interesting, to create an image where every aspect of the photo (pun intended) works together to catch your viewer’s eye, to make your audience stop & think.
A square crop can be a useful tool to bring emphasis to your subject, as in this image of a black cat in a dark room. (His pupils are centered vertically along the vertical lines of a rule-of-thirds placement, by the way.)
Sometimes a square crop, being such an instantly recognizable shape, can provide interesting juxtaposition for a round subject.
Leading lines can play particularly well with a central focus point in a square-cropped image.
Whatever you decide to do with your square-cropped images this week, just be sure to have fun with it!
Eric Culver Photography 