Every Sunday morning I do a photo walk. No agenda, no client brief, just me and whatever I happen to grab on the way out the door. And for an embarrassingly long time, I noticed I was coming home with roll after roll of horizontal shots. Same orientation, every single time, almost like I’d forgotten the camera could rotate. It wasn’t until I started being intentional about it that I realized how much I was leaving on the table compositionally.

That’s exactly what Mark Denney tackles in this tutorial, and he frames it in a way that finally made it click for me. He draws from a real teaching moment at a workshop in the Lofoten Islands, where photographers kept asking him which orientation to choose for a given scene. One question, a thousand people wondering the same thing. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube - then come back here for the breakdown.

What I love about this video is that it doesn’t just define the two orientations and call it a day. It gives you a mental framework for making the decision in the field, which is where it actually needs to happen, usually fast, with light changing and weather doing whatever it wants.

Step 1: Understand What Each Orientation Is Actually Saying

Landscape orientation photo from Norway with mountains and red cabins Landscape orientation photo from Norway with mountains and red cabins Before you can choose intelligently, you need to internalize what each orientation communicates visually, not just technically. A landscape (horizontal) orientation means the width of your frame is greater than the height. That wider field of view naturally creates a sense of spaciousness. It invites the eye to travel across the scene, taking in distance, context, and the broader story of a place.

Portrait (vertical) orientation flips that dynamic. When the height exceeds the width, you’re pulling the viewer’s attention inward and upward. Subjects feel closer, more commanding, more intimate. You’re trading context for impact. Neither is better - they’re just different conversations.

Step 2: Ask How Much Context the Scene Needs

Wide Norway landscape showing full scene context left to right Wide Norway landscape showing full scene context left to right This is the question Mark keeps returning to, and it’s a genuinely useful filter. Some scenes earn their power from totality - the whole sweep of a mountain range, the relationship between a foreground element and a distant horizon, the way light plays across an entire valley. For those scenes, landscape orientation isn’t just a default choice. It’s the right tool. The horizontal frame has room to carry all of that information without feeling crowded.

Other scenes don’t need context. They need presence. A lone tree on a ridge, a waterfall with strong vertical lines, a person standing against a dramatic sky - these subjects can actually suffer in a wide frame because there’s too much competing information around them. Rotating to portrait strips away the noise and lets the subject own the space.

Step 3: Look for Strong Vertical or Horizontal Lines in Your Scene

Comparing same scene in both orientations side by side in Lightroom Comparing same scene in both orientations side by side in Lightroom One of the most practical on-location tricks Mark demonstrates is using the scene’s own geometry as a guide. If your eye is immediately drawn to strong vertical elements - tall cliffs, trees, waterfalls, architectural columns - those are signals that a portrait orientation might reinforce rather than fight the natural energy of the scene.

Horizontal elements work the other way. A long coastline, a flat horizon at golden hour, a wide river snaking through a valley - these compositions often feel cut off or squeezed in a vertical frame. The horizontal format lets those lines breathe and lead the eye naturally through the image. Think of the orientation as either amplifying or conflicting with what’s already there.

Step 4: Consider Where the Image Will Live

Mark Denney speaking to camera about orientation decision-making Mark Denney speaking to camera about orientation decision-making This one doesn’t come up explicitly in a lot of beginner tutorials, but it matters enormously in practice. Landscape orientation has historically dominated photography because it mirrors how we experience the world through our own eyes. It also played well on desktop monitors and television screens. But if you’re shooting for social media, for a vertical print, or for a story format, portrait orientation is increasingly the smarter default.

I’ve started asking myself this question before I even raise the camera: where is this image going? If it’s for a horizontal banner or a website header, I’m thinking wide. If it’s for Instagram or a vertical editorial layout, I need to think tall. Shooting both orientations at the same location takes maybe 30 extra seconds and gives you options in post that you simply can’t fake later.

Step 5: Test Both Before You Commit

Lightroom crop tool being used to simulate portrait crop on landscape image Lightroom crop tool being used to simulate portrait crop on landscape image Mark demonstrates this in Lightroom using the crop tool to quickly simulate what a scene would look like in the opposite orientation, but the real lesson is to build this habit in the field. Before you pack up and move on, physically rotate your camera and look through the viewfinder (or at your screen) in the other orientation. You don’t have to love what you see. But you have to actually look.

I’ve missed too many vertical compositions simply because I never tried them. The shot that got the most engagement on my feed last year was a vertical frame of a waterfall in Olympic National Park - a location I’d photographed horizontally four times before. I only rotated the camera because I’d started making it a rule. Sometimes the better image is one physical rotation away.

A Note From My Own Experience: Don’t Let Habit Make the Decision

The hardest part of applying this framework isn’t understanding it - it’s catching yourself in the moment when you’re on autopilot. I still default to horizontal when I’m cold, tired, or rushing to beat the light. So I built a small habit: after every composition I’m happy with, I ask “what would this look like vertical?” just once. Not every time leads somewhere, but maybe one in four does. That’s a meaningful hit rate.

If you shoot tethered or review your shots in the field, try pulling up a recent image in Lightroom’s crop overlay (shortcut key R) and dragging the crop to a portrait ratio. Mark walks through exactly this in the video and it’s a quick way to train your eye without extra shooting. You start to see the patterns in which scenes lend themselves to which orientation, and eventually the decision becomes more instinctive.

The single biggest takeaway here is this: choosing between landscape and portrait orientation isn’t about which one looks nicer in general. It’s about which one serves the specific story you’re trying to tell with that specific scene. Wide frames share context. Vertical frames create presence. Figure out what your image needs, and let that drive the decision.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube to see Mark walk through real examples from his Lofoten Islands workshop, including the side-by-side Lightroom comparisons that make the difference between the two orientations genuinely visible.