This is the Tulip Staircase in the Queen’s House, Greenwich, London
I’m doing a photography project which is inspired by music / songs. This one is rather literal and the song is from my school days… “Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead or Alive (although I could have entitled it Spiral Staircase which might have been better or perhaps just a wee bit too trite).
Anyhow, the questions is which is more pleasing from a critique perspective? The landscape letterbox-esque one or the square.
I appreciate that the answer might be media specific (i.e. Instagram will do better square and perhaps Facebook more flexible) but all things being equal. I can’t make my mind up.
Would very much like to hear people’s thoughts.
Any pertinent technical details:
The square is in fact a hand held focus stack 1/30 at 26mm
The landscape is a single shot with the same settings. Both at ISO 320.
I was spinning around in the floor, trying to find the nest angles. In particular, to exclude lamps and windows that would have spoiled the simplicity I was looking for.
The square crop emphasizes the pleats surrounding the staircase more than the horizontal. Otherwise both work extremely well. Just beautiful images. Thanks for posting them.
Thanks @Patricia_Brundage and @Paul_Breitkreuz. Did you get a sense of the skylight being blown highlights? They’re not, but I wasn’t sure if it felt like they could be perceived that way?
I like this concept a lot. My preference is the square crop. I don’t think the skylight looks blown at all. Looks very natural as it would be much brighter. Overall the tonal balance works well.
Vikki, not at all. Yes they’re very bright and a good point of focus, as well as aiding to light the entire image. However, they do not feel or look blown out to me, just real bright…
I much prefer the square crop, both for its composition and the nice blue tones within. The skylight looks quite natural and not blown to my eye. A very nicely creative image.
I’m one of the square people, particularly the more defined stairs and that beautiful blue. I wonder what the landscape one would look like rotated CCW 90 degrees.
Square 100%. The square shape emphasises the bilateral symmetry of the staircase and creates additional depth to the spiral. In fact I would go slightly further and ensure your central ceiling skylight is absolute dead centre as well and then recover the image back to a square crop by stretching it back to a square. As the adjustment is minimal I think your circular attic skylight will retain it’s circular shape. Beautiful image but worth the addtional tweaks I think
Hi @Ian_Cameron this is what that ends up like. Mainly because the original capture has limited space remaining above the skylight. My initial thoughts are that it loses too much of the pleats (as well as, but less critically, some of the staircase at the bottom) but would welcome opinions.
A classic concept - and executed beautifully! I can see and understand the strength of the square presentation, but I actually like both.
For the square version, I really like your repost. With the original square version I was thinking the bottom felt a little cramped; so either cropping as you did, or wishing for a bit more room.
The extra room is one of the reasons I also like the horizontal. You might be able to get away with a little crop off the right. The reason I’m thinking as that almost brings it to a “golden rule” composition; well, not really, but sort of…
Beautifully captured and the good news is that you could present this in many ways and still have a successful and great image with impact. Kudos on this one.
I think I prefer the square because the railing ends at the side of the image instead of at the bottom. The landscape version might look better as a portrait version for the same reason.
I like the landscape version. The reasonI do is that the tail end (or beginning) of the stair case needs room. I love this type of shot. I have one of the lightbulb staircase in Prague which is really similar and I have had a ton of fun playing with that one.
