It's been said, "necessity is the mother of invention". No one knows exactly who said that but some site Mark Twain. That quote evolved from, of all people, Plato who said, "Our need will be the real creator".
I would like to further modify that and say limitation is the mother of invention or the real creator.
Often we think of limitations imposed on us by others (i.e. parents, authorities, governing bodies, social norms etc.) but there is another self imposed limitation and that is the direction I'm moving in with my image making. Before my camera work has always been shot in the 3:2/4:6 frame format and if I wanted something different I would crop that raw file before moving further in the editing phase.
I've decided to upend that by only shooting in 1:1 frame format. Yesterday and today were my first days limiting myself in this way. It's interesting how looking at the view screen and seeing only a square image changes how you think about seeing. In some ways it's changed my subject matter. In other ways it's changed how I photograph the same old subjects that I would photograph before in the more familiar landscape/portrait format. I'm still interested in the same things it's just that I am seeing them differently. And it's not like I see them one way and they deliberately change how I want to see them via cropping. I'm actually forcing myself to see them squared.
I don't know how long I'll do this but it will be for some length of time to see how this will change the way I see and perceive things over time as I get more used to this square format.
Todays images are of palms of my left and right hand. An abstract, inverted presentation that I find interesting. Again these images were shot square format /raw. Editing in Photoshop.