I ventured into the Auckland Winter Gardens - the "hot house" which is a fantastic place, a bit like Kew Gardens but on a much smaller scale.
One observation I made was that when considering the vertical shot, I was naturally drawn to shoot something tall and straight, or at least something which had the perspective of being tall. For example, the confined space of the bench below, the path immediately in front of the bench, draws the viewer's gaze inwards. The shrubbery framing the bench, gives the picture a sense of direction, upwards. This works well in the vertical shot, the horizontal one works well too in this case as the path, gives a good lead into the frame.
Vertical works well where you can hone in and focus on one subject, as in the case of the above pods.
On the whole, in the above shots, I tended to prefer the vertical shots of the plants - I am aware though, that I have placed my main subjects centrally in the frame, and or low in the frame - and in future I want to experiment - I mentioned at the beginning of this course, that developing a photographers eye, is cognitive effort.
Conclusion: this was an interesting exercise, and as shown you can achieve quite significant differences with vertical and horizontal frames. Going forward, I am going to take both vertical and horizontal shots to compare the effect. I particularly like the effect of the vertical frame on subjects which are quite simple - this adds a sense of dynamics, which a horizontal frame is sometimes lacking. I am also going to experiment with square frames and canted frames.
