Last Updated on 08/07/2025 by Chris Gampat
The biggest rule when it comes to technical matters in photography often has to do with composition. It’s far more important than focus, and it can even affect the subject matter greatly. Often, you’ll be told to use the rule of thirds to compose an image. If you’re shooting vertically, then it applies in one way and it applies in a whole other way when you shoot in landscape format. But the biggest way to break those rules has to do with shooting in different formats. One of the ways that completely breaks photography is with the square format.
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The square format makes everything even no matter what. Honestly, it’s pretty impossible to not create a sense of balance in an image when shooting in square format. In turn, it means that you can put something anywhere in the scene and make the image work.
The reason why square format works so well is because the rule of thirds usually doesn’t break the image up into equal parts at all times with typical aspect ratios. But with the square format, everything is even. Your mind is naturally inclined to create balance of some sort because all of the sides are even.
To that end, the square format works very well everywhere. It works on the desktop, the iPad, your phone, etc. It won’t matter how someone rotates their phone, it will always just work.
So if you’ve ever wanted to just shoot and not worry about rules, how you’re posting the image later on, or how you’re printing the photo, then consider simply just working in the square format.