From Looking at a Landscape to Being Within It
A Reflection on Photographic Proportions, Perspective and the Feeling of Place
Chiang Mai, Thailand — October 2026
As I continue experimenting with stitching multiple photographs together to construct a single image, I am becoming increasingly interested in how the proportions of the finished photograph influence not only what we see, but how we feel about what we are seeing.
Initially, I was attracted to the panoramic format because of its ability to bring together an expansive field of vision. The panorama seemed to offer something beyond the conventional photograph: a way of extending the image horizontally, accumulating visual information and constructing a representation of a place that might approximate the experience of looking around.
Yet, as I have begun comparing these panoramic images with versions composed in more conventional landscape proportions, I am discovering something unexpected.
I find myself preferring the landscape proportions, not necessarily because they are more visually pleasing, but because they produce a different emotional experience.
The panoramic image invites me to look across a landscape. The landscape-proportioned image seems to invite me into it.
There is a subtle but significant difference between these two experiences.
In the panorama, I am conscious of the breadth of the scene. My eyes travel horizontally, moving from one element to another, taking in the extent of the space. I feel positioned outside the image, observing and surveying what is before me.
In the landscape version, the experience becomes more intimate. The boundaries of the image seem to bring the space closer. My attention is less concerned with the extent of the view and more engaged with the relationships between the objects, buildings, trees and spaces within it.
I begin to feel that I am standing somewhere inside the landscape rather than looking at it from a distance.
The Feeling of Being There
Looking at the images I have made in Chiang Mai, this distinction becomes particularly apparent.
In the photographs of the temple courtyard, the panoramic composition emphasises the horizontal arrangement of the buildings and the expanse of the lawn. The architecture becomes part of a broader visual survey.
In the landscape composition, however, the trees, their shadows, the grass and the surrounding buildings begin to establish a more enclosed environment. The foreground becomes important. I can almost imagine walking across the grass, feeling the shade of the trees and experiencing the physical space.
The image seems less concerned with describing the place and more concerned with communicating what it might feel like to be there.
Something similar occurs in the photographs overlooking Chiang Mai.
The panoramic version offers an impressive geographical view, with the city stretching towards the distant mountains. It communicates scale, distance and the extent of the urban landscape.
Yet the landscape version creates a different relationship between the foreground vegetation, the city and the sky. The view feels more immediate. The surrounding foliage becomes part of my position as the observer, almost as though I am standing within the vegetation and looking out.
The landscape is no longer simply something in front of me. It becomes an environment that surrounds me.
The photographs of the moss-covered chedi reveal another aspect of this experience. In the more contained composition, the monument has a stronger physical presence. The surrounding trees and pathways establish a sense of enclosure, drawing me into the quiet, contemplative atmosphere of the site.
Even the photographs of the MAYA shopping centre reveal this difference. The wider view emphasises the urban intersection and the activity surrounding the building. The landscape version gives the architecture greater presence, bringing me closer to the experience of standing at that intersection.
The Frame as an Emotional Boundary
I am beginning to think of the photographic frame not simply as a device for organising visual information, but as something that determines my emotional proximity to the subject.
The panorama extends the boundaries of vision. It allows more of the world to enter the photograph, but this expansion can also introduce a sense of distance.
The landscape format, by limiting that extension, can create a greater feeling of concentration and closeness.
This is not necessarily a question of one format being superior to another. Rather, I am becoming interested in the different experiences they make possible.
A panorama might encourage the viewer to explore an image, while a more contained landscape composition might encourage the viewer to dwell within it.
Perhaps the distinction is between seeing more of a place and feeling more present in a place.
This also raises questions about the relationship between photographic perspective and human perception.
When I stand within a landscape, I do not experience it as a neatly bounded rectangle. I am aware of what lies beyond my immediate field of vision. My body occupies a position within the space, and my perception is shaped by movement, memory, atmosphere and the relationship between near and distant objects.
Could it be that the landscape-proportioned photograph, despite showing less of the scene, sometimes comes closer to communicating this embodied experience?
Constructing a Landscape Rather Than Recording One
There is another dimension to these experiments that I find increasingly significant.
These images are not conventional single-exposure photographs. They are constructed from multiple photographs, each representing a slightly different position, direction or moment of observation.
The resulting image is therefore not simply a record of what the camera saw at one instant.
It is an accumulation of observations.
The stitching process brings these separate fragments together, creating a new photographic space that may appear continuous but is, in fact, constructed.
I find this particularly interesting in relation to my developing research into photography, memory and acts of remembering.
Memory rarely presents a place to us as a single, fixed image. Instead, we remember fragments: the position of a tree, the light falling across a building, the colour of the sky, the feeling of standing somewhere.
These fragments become assembled into our recollection of a place.
In some respects, the process of stitching photographs together begins to resemble this act of remembering.
I collect individual observations and subsequently reconstruct them into a new image.
The choice of proportions then becomes another act of interpretation. By selecting the landscape format rather than retaining the full panorama, I am deciding not only what the viewer will see, but how I would like the space to be experienced.
Towards an Interior Landscape
This leads me back to the idea of Landscapes of the Interior.
I have previously thought of the interior landscape in relation to memory, personal history, collected objects and the psychological spaces we inhabit.
But perhaps the idea of an interior landscape need not be confined to domestic or enclosed spaces.
An exterior landscape can also become an interior experience.
What matters may be less the physical subject of the photograph than the relationship established between the viewer and the photographed space.
If an image creates a feeling of intimacy, presence or belonging, it may begin to operate as an interior landscape, even when the subject is an expansive city, a temple courtyard or a distant mountain range.
I am interested in this possibility because it suggests that the interior landscape is not simply a category of subject matter.
It might also be a way of seeing, constructing and experiencing the world.
A Developing Understanding
These experiments have made me more conscious that photographic proportions are not merely technical or aesthetic decisions.
They can influence the psychological space of an image.
I began stitching photographs because I was interested in extending the possibilities of photographic representation. I wanted to construct images that moved beyond the limitations of a single camera exposure.
What I am now discovering is that the most expansive image is not necessarily the one that communicates the strongest experience of place.
Sometimes, reducing the breadth of the image seems to increase its emotional depth.
The panorama may show me more of the world, but the landscape composition can make me feel more connected to it.
And perhaps this is what I am increasingly searching for in my photographic practice: not simply to show what a place looks like, but to create an image that allows someone else to experience something of what it felt like to be there.
The panorama allows me to survey the landscape. The landscape composition invites me to inhabit it.