Square v. Portrait

This photo I put on on Instagram last week turned out to be one of my more liked posts.

Though I’m a sporadic Instagram user, I think it’s an amazing product. Their early selection of the square photo format was a genius response to the constraints of the camera phone and a spot on insight into how to simplify photo composition for a mass audience.

All the same, I often lament the success of the Instagram square. Rectangles just make pictorial storytelling more interesting. Here’s how I would have cropped the same image in a portrait-oriented frame. (I had to recreate the vintage effects, so they don’t match the photo above perfectly.)

I’m not arguing that Instagram should allow portrait images. I’m just saying the world is more interesting than just squares.

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