One day I would love to own a Hasselblad. Or a Rollieflex. Or some other of those great classic medium format cameras that natively take pictures in a square format. I think there is a special elegance to the square as a border for an image. It by no means suits every image bit when it does the image is endowed with a certain strength and solidity.
In his later years the great Ansel Adams shot with a square format Hasselblad camera but almost always with an eye to cropping a final rectangular image out of the frame. Cropping after the fact is always an option but most photographers feel the most fulfilled when they are able to take the frame they see through the viewfinder and nestle a particular scene perfectly inside.
The above picture was taken using my Mamiya M645 Pro medium format camera. It, like all my other cameras, shoots normal rectangular images. The square crop suited this image. I didn't see it when taking it, only later when editing.
The magic of a particular format, however, is that you start to see like it sees once familiar with it. If I want to start taking truly great square images I need a camera that "sees" in square.
Some day.
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