Expanded vision through narrower thinking
What is this? If you said a canvas or a blank canvas you are partially correct. If you said a blank canvas with a wide aspect ratio then we’re on the same page, so to speak. I bought several canvas’ with 2:1 aspect rations and need to get myself thinking outside the 4:3’ish box. So what better way than to do a little photography exercise. Fortunately I seem to have a camera for any occasion and so from my shelf I pulled what can only be described as a photographic anachronism, the Minolta Vectis S-1. What is it? It is an APS (advanced photo system) SLR camera with interchangeable lenses. If you recall APS is the small negative format film that digital has made effectively obsolete. What is unique about this camera and film though is that it provides for panoramic pictures. While not a true panoramic in the sense that the panoramic image is just the central area of the larger image it does mask the viewfinder giving you a 3:1 view. Now for the narrower thinking, you can’t walk around looking through a camera viewfinder, unless you want to fall and hurt yourself, so it becomes necessary to try and envision how the world around you looks in this “narrow” view. Here is where the expanded vision begins, as you look around you will see new compositions and inter relations between objects that don’t work in the normal smaller box we are accustomed to. Lines that enter the frame in unfamiliar ways, new points of interest, it is an opportunity to explore and see things in a different way.
If you want to see the images in their original aspect ratio, you will need to click on them individually. An interesting side effect of the square thumbnails is that it’s apparent that several of these images work well as squares, possibly even better. But I will let you be the judge of that.
