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Successful vertical images

::regmar
05/13/05 7:43 PM GMT
OK most of us photographers have at one time or another shot and uploaded a really nice vertical image (taller than it is wide) that we thought should be popular only to see it fall flat and get deleted instead of making it into the permanent galleries. The reason this happens is of course that Caedes is dedicated to desktop wallpaper, and horizontal images just make better wallpaper than vertical ones. Vertical pohotos stuck on a background leave empty space on each side of the image, while horizontal ones use the entire screen.

Many of us just stop posting them, because they start out life with such a handicap. Well I've come to believe that although this is true, there are some things you can do to make them work.

1) Use frames. An attractive frame can make a good photo great, and it can reformat the vertical image to fill a horizontal space. See Nathan Smith's work for good examples of this (nmsmith).

2) Use vivid colors or sharp contrasts in your image. This hint applies to all images, not just vertical ones, but the vertical ones need all the help they can get, and they need people to be drawn to them somehow. Bright colors do this well. You want people as they flip though the New Images to see your image. Orange, bright yellow, red - all the colors women wear to stand out in a crowd help your image stand out on the New Images page. If you must do black and white be aware of these two points.

- people don't like black and white destop wallpaper in general.

- Black and white gets lost in a sea of color.

To address this you can either post color or use high-contrast black and white images with few compositional elements and strong shapes.

My experiments here on caedes.net have drawn me to these conclusions. Does anybody have any other ideas?

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DixieNormus
05/13/05 9:06 PM GMT
Perhaps if you have two images that compliment one another....such as flowers, landscapes, animals, etc;.....you could combine the two images side by side, and create one full screen image out of the two combined vertical images?
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trisweb
05/13/05 9:31 PM GMT
I've been disappointed that there are so few portrait (vertical) oriented photos on Caedes. I'd say I take about half portrait, half landscape; I always try to keep a balance -- some photographs just have to be taken vertically -- anything long, tall, or that just feels better that way. It's unfortunate that this whole photographic orientation won't really fly here, and I only get to choose from half of my shots. If a vertical shot turns out really well, though, I would upload it. Maybe I'll try framing next time.
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::regmar
05/13/05 11:21 PM GMT
See, the trick with the vertical images is to make people open them. Unless something about the image is really extraordinary the average viewer will just go right past them to the traditionally oriented images. I'd like to see more people experimenting with vertical formats, so we can see what works. In fact I'd like to have a way to find these images on Caedes, so we could compare them and use evolution to get it right.
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