Have you ever thought about the best shape for a photo in blogging?

So much depends on the device your reader is using. A large PC screen offers many alternatives a cell phone or tablet doesn’t. My own frame of reference is a laptop.

My earlier posts often mixed the sizes of pictures in a post, for variety the way a newspaper photo essay would. But cell phones require a strong image rather than detail.

In general, then, I’ve been settling on full width but shallow – not that the visual content always cooperates.

Alas, those shots do lose some power in fitting into the blog’s formula width, unlike the full screen I use in selecting and editing.

In a grouping, I’ve been keeping them full-width rather than mixing and matching sizes. When our reader scans down, this functions somewhat like a moving camera roll shot. It’s not the way you’d “read” a photo on paper or in an art gallery, admittedly, but it’s an option the technology leads to.

But I’ve also been shooting a lot of square shots, which not too long ago was considered verboten by many observers.

And then, sometimes a deep vertical shot is dramatic, revealing itself portion by portion instead of fully at once.

What’s working best for you?