The title of this book of photographs refers to the frame of the pictures and not the content within their borders.  When I first got my Leica D-Lux 3 a few years ago the large majority of photos I took were in the 16:9 aspect ratio, which was one of the camera's selling points.  However, to me this is an awkward ratio, as it's long and narrow and very hard to fill.  The film director Sam Fuller once remarked about Cinemascope, that it was best suited for framing snakes.  Well, there aren't many of those in Manhattan.  The other problem I encountered with this format is the extensive distortion created by the 25mm lens fitted on the camera.  Consequently, shooting horizontally was a virtual impossibility and almost immediately I resorted to capturing most images vertically, where the distortion is less pronounced and the results are actually more intriguing aesthetically.  But lost in all this was my love for the square frame, at least as close to square as I could get given the cameras I've been using.  Anyway, I set the lens on my D-Lux 3 to the 4:3 aspect ratio and used this format almost exclusively for almost a year.  While the megapixel equivalent is reduced (from 10.1 to 7.5), the photos seem to have more of an immediacy.  The 4:3 aspect ratio (there's also a 3:2 setting) also better serves the flash on the camera (some party shots are included here as evidence).  So, you might say that ALMOST SQUARE is an attempt to get back to square one.