# Hero column portrait > An opening section whose photograph stands as a column rather than a band: a tracked eyebrow, a display headline, a lede held to a 30rem measure and two actions on the left, and on the right a single portrait cover taller than everything beside it, carrying nothing but one tracked caption on an opaque plate at its foot. The cover includes a replaceable example photograph. States no colour and no font of its own. Canonical: https://patternpaste.com/pattern/hero-column-portrait.html Section: Hero Access: Included in Pattern Paste access. Needs: Requires a block theme on WordPress 7.0 to 7.1. Classic themes and page builders are outside our supported setup. Adaptive patterns use the block theme’s colour, spacing and typography presets; styled variations declare their own colours or type. Blocks: button, buttons, column, columns, cover, group, heading, paragraph Keywords: hero, portrait, cover, photo, landing, columns ## Variations (3) ### Portrait right (the default) Identical markup in every theme. The reading runs down the left and the picture stands to the right, bottom-aligned with the last button so it rises above the type instead of sitting beside it. On a phone the columns stack and the type comes first. ### Night portrait Identical markup in every theme. The colour axis, inverted: the band flips to your contrast with your base on it, the buttons swap with it, and the foot plate inverts too. Every block theme defines both slugs, so this arrives everywhere. The composition is unchanged. ### Portrait left Identical markup in every theme. The composition mirrors: the picture takes the left column and the type the right. Same widths, same type, same plate. Stacked on a phone the picture comes first, which is the trade the mirror makes. --- ## The signature moment: the picture is a column, not a band Every other cover in this catalogue runs edge to edge; this one stands up inside the content measure and is deliberately taller than all the type beside it, so the section's weight is on the right while its reading order is on the left. That asymmetry is the whole idea, and it survives colourlessness because it is made of proportion: a 38rem picture against roughly 30rem of type, both sitting on the same bottom line. The columns are bottom-aligned so the foot of the picture and the foot of the button row agree, and everything the picture is taller by happens at the top, where there is nothing to collide with. `verticalAlignment` is written on the parent `core/columns` **and on every child `core/column`**: the parent attribute alone does nothing on the front end, because core pins `.wp-block-columns { align-items: normal !important }` over the class the parent emits. ## The cover, and what is not in it The cover includes an example photograph through a public image URL in the copied markup. Choose Replace in the cover toolbar to select a photograph from your own media library. The veil is a `contrast` chain at `dimRatio` 20, which is decoration and nothing else: no word in this pattern sits on the photograph. The one line that reads as a caption is on an **opaque plate** whose ground is a `base` chain and whose type is a `contrast` chain, so the contrast walk finds the plate first and measures an ordinary guaranteed pair rather than type over an image whose luminance nobody can know. That is the only legible way to put a line on a picture at a veil this light. The plate lives INSIDE the cover's inner container, because a cover clips its overflow and forms no stacking context: anything pulled up from outside would paint under the photograph, invisibly. It is pushed to the foot by a vertical flex group with `verticalAlignment: bottom` and its own `min-height: 38rem`, not by a custom `contentPosition`, which would shrink-wrap the inner container and make the plate's width depend on the length of its words. The cover's height is `38rem`, never a `vh` value: the preview on this page sizes its frame to the pattern, and a viewport-relative height would size the pattern to the frame in turn. The cover also states its own `style.color.text` as a `base` chain, so core's `:where(.wp-block-cover:not(.has-text-color))` rule, which would otherwise paint anything in it a literal `#fff`, never fires. ## Below 782 Core stacks the columns. In the base the type column is first in the markup, so a phone reads the eyebrow, the headline, the lede and the buttons, and then meets the picture: the reading order the desktop composition already had. `portrait-mirror` puts the picture first in the markup, so on a phone the picture comes first; that is the trade the mirror makes and it is stated on the product page. ## What it inherits, what it decides Inherits: every colour (the band is `base` with `contrast` on it, the veil and the primary button are `contrast`, the plate is `base`), the typeface, the spacing scale, and the button's hover and focus states, which are the theme's. Decides: the proportion. A 13px tracked eyebrow, a headline from 40px to 68px at 0.96 line-height and -0.035em, a 17px to 19px lede at 1.6 on a 30rem measure, square buttons sized by padding rather than by a font-size preset, and the 48/44 split with a gutter that opens from 2rem to 5.5rem. `core/button` carries no `typography` attribute anywhere in this pattern: that does not stay valid across editor versions, so the buttons are sized with padding. ## No hand-off row `cover-plate` and the other full-bleed covers ship a short row of page copy below them so a buyer can see where the section ends. This cover is inside the 1240px measure with the band's own paper around it on all four sides, so the section already reads as a section and the extra row would be scenery. ## What a buyer changes first The photograph, then the headline. The eyebrow and the plate's caption are both set in caps with wide tracking and read best under about 28 characters; past that they wrap and the plate grows a second line. ## Variations - **Portrait left** (`portrait-mirror`): the composition mirrors. The cover takes the left column at 44%, the type the right at 48%. Nothing else moves, so it is a composition variation and not a colour one. - **Night portrait** (`night-portrait`): the colour axis, by inversion. The band becomes `contrast` with `base` type, both buttons swap, and the foot plate inverts with the band, so it stays ink on the picture rather than becoming a white chip on a dark section. Inversion between `base` and `contrast` is the only colour move that arrives in every theme; every other slug's luminance is unknowable. The veil is unchanged, because it is still a `contrast` chain over the photograph in both. ## Included images The copied markup includes WordPress Photo Directory example photographs. The public image URLs keep the examples visible after pasting. Select an image or cover and choose **Replace** to use your own Media Library files. See [image credits](/image-credits/) for the sources and licenses. Pasting an image URL does not import a Media Library attachment.