To crop or not to crop.....

[Gentleman Villain]

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. My kipper was egg yolk yellow, and I wouldn't blame anyone now for cropping it out!

 

lol!

[Gentleman Villain]

I'm trying to remember - in Gunther Ostherloh's Leica R there was just the image of the girl moving out of the frame to the left and looking back like you mention iirc. The effect was quite provocative. Of course you are absolutely right, but used that way the crop changes the meaning of the photograph, and takes more skill to get right. It should make Jeff happy

 

I'm not familiar with the photograph that you mentioned, but according to your description...yes... that sounds like exactly the type of effect that I'm trying to explain. My first post in this thread relating to this idea stated that most extreme crops don't work. However, I left it open that some actually do....especially if the photographer is aware of the effect that he's going for...and in that case...yes it would take more skill to get it right IMHO (just like you stated)

 

The effect doesn't just have to be limited to emphasizing motion or movement, it could also provide a source of simple tension. For example, imagine if a photographer were to photograph a vampire and put his face on the very edge of the frame and far away from the lens axis, and then crop heavily into the edge of the frame around the vampire's face. This could provide a very uneasy feeling of tension as if the vampire was teetering on the edge of some unseen dimension. In this case, any loss of resolution due to extreme cropping could actually add to the effect (especially if it was shot on film with the grain becoming more pronounced). Just a thought, but there are many ways that a photographer can manipulate this idea of the psychology behind lens axis placement.

[jaapv]

Thank you for mentioning this; it is an aspect I have never consciously thought about up till now. One of those things you know but don't realize.

[Gentleman Villain]

Thank you for mentioning this; it is an aspect I have never consciously thought about up till now. One of those things you know but don't realize.

 

That's true! There are so many things about photography that we'll know intuitively but might not have ever tried to put into words

[Guest mc_k]

thanks for the good info on perspective, center of perspective

[Guest mc_k]

... fashion photography...

 

But I think the high-end catalogs are really quite good. The point is not always selling dresses, it's often the collaborative art of the designer and photographer.

[chrism]

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Admittedly a provocative question, but when there are so many decisions to make in creating a photograph, why is composition at the time of capture rated so much more highly than the same decision made later (apart from the loss of quality inherent in throwing away some of the frame)? I suspect the argument might be that the former is the way of a better photographer who sees the picture she wants before she takes it, whilst the latter might be more the mark of the artist who is still being creative at the printing stage. I'm just happy when I get something that pleases me!

 

Chris

[SJP]

From a more abstract point of view, it seems to me we are discusing technique versus artistic merit.

 

In music things which are technically very difficult are not necessarily the "best", but technically very good players can make a lot of impact when playing something simple, you can hear the difference.

 

Something similar holds for photography. There are technically excellent photographers that make dull and uninspiring pictures, and technically very poor photographers that capture everyones attention because they have vision.

 

Is a perfectly exposed and framed picture taken with a M2 and no light meter better than exactly the same image taken using a M7 (i.e. with light meter)? The former is technically a better performance (or shows more skill) but this would imply that any other added challenge would add "value" to the picture which I find hard to swallow "I took this picture while simultaneously frying a steak and whistling rule britannia in 17/5 time".

 

Being able to frame accurately is something you can learn, it is technique - just like being able to guess exposure, it does not imply "better picture".

[Jerry_R]

Shallow DOF is important to many. Isn't it, that when you stand further than you could - because you are afraid of cutting something due to paralax - it increases unintentionally DOF?

 

For me it is not a problem, but reading the forum, I see a lot of people paying money for fast lenses, because they want to make pictures in natural light AND they want to achieve shallow DOF.

 

And I think - due to longer distance and later cropping - we loose that shallow DOF, but no-one mentiones that.

Does above bothers you, or it doesn't matter?

[NB23]

If you are serious about your photography, about the craft and about the energyyou put into it: Never crop.

 

If you're shooting around with no vision, then cropping is a part of a sloppy workflow.

[Gentleman Villain]

In music things which are technically very difficult are not necessarily the "best", but technically very good players can make a lot of impact when playing something simple, you can hear the difference.

 

1000% truth

[giordano]

If you are serious about your photography, about the craft and about the energyyou put into it: Never crop.

 

If you're serious about your photography, cropping is just a tool that you can choose to use or not, along with interchangeable lenses, camera movements, filters, exposure meters and all the rest.

 

If you're shooting around with no vision, then cropping is a part of a sloppy workflow.

 

Agree 100%.

[delander †]

I still can't understand why anyone with Jeff (Delander)'s knowledge of photography should think that making an irregular black border on a print amounts to a representation that the picture has not been cropped.

 

The mere existence of a black border can't do that, no more than the existence of clouds in a 19th century landscape represent that those clouds were on the original negative.* Nothing in a photograph, including the border, is necessarily what it seems.

 

So only some extrinsic factor can make the border not just an element in the print and its presentation but also an actual representation that "This print shows the whole area of the negative." For instance, did HC-B instruct his printer(s) to include the border on uncropped prints but not on cropped ones?

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

* For younger readers: in the early days, if you exposed for the landscape the sky was burnt out, and if you exposed to get the clouds the landscape was hopelessly underexposed. The solution was to strip in the clouds from another negative - either from another exposure of the same scene (just like HDR today) or, more often, from a collection of good cloudscapes.

 

I draw your attention to my post 163 in this thread, relating to James Ravilious, who include the film rebate in his prints to show that they are not cropped, evidently he believed he was following the practice of HCB.

 

Jeff

[giordano]

I draw your attention to my post 163 in this thread, relating to James Ravilious, who include the film rebate in his prints to show that they are not cropped, evidently he believed he was following the practice of HCB.

 

Maybe I'm just more of a cynic than you are. It seems that when we see that kind of black border you want to think "this means the print wasn't cropped" and I just think "the print's been made to look as if its from the entire negative". If I believe Ravilious didn't crop his photographs, it's because he said so, not because of the way his prints look.

[giordano]

HENRI CARTIER- BRESSON

 

Mention obligatoire

 

Pr!ère de reproduire cette photo intégralement

sans en modifier le cadrage.

 

 

PLEASE

 

DO NOT CROP

 

THIS PHOTOGRAPH

 

This was the stamps used by Henri on the back of his prints.

 

This is a request to picture editors. It says nothing about whether or not the print is from the entire area of the negative.

[azzo]

If you are serious about your photography, about the craft and about the energyyou put into it: Never crop.

 

If you're shooting around with no vision, then cropping is a part of a sloppy workflow.

 

 

Practice what you preach !

[Rolo]

If you are serious about your photography, about the craft and about the energyyou put into it: Never crop.

 

If you're shooting around with no vision, then cropping is a part of a sloppy workflow.

 

No problem in you having that view, but I absolutely disagree for myself.

 

To confine your vision to a pre-defined piece of film seems a nonsense to me, especially one with a 3:2 ratio. Would you recommend that same approach for different formats, or would you stick with 3:2 as the perfect ratio.

 

Maximise film area by all means to maintain quality; letting the film industry of the 1920's determine the shape of your your images seems naive and restrictive.

[bill]

Don't feed the troll, chaps. You know what he's like.

 

Regards,

 

Bill

[sanyasi]

On occasion, I take a photo and it comes out just as I hoped, but when I print it, I see some detail that I didn't see when I originally took the photo. On at least three occasions, that detail turned a good picture into a great one.

 

This leads to a question for those who oppose cropping: You focus on living with what you framed. Your view is that you shouldn't edit things out, but do a better job of framing the shot. Does that mean you discard the photos where there is something in the frame that you now like, but didn't notice at the time you framed the shot?

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[earleygallery]

If you are serious about your photography, about the craft and about the energyyou put into it: Never crop.

 

If you're shooting around with no vision, then cropping is a part of a sloppy workflow.

 

Your opinion and you're entitled to it, but personally I think it's bollocks! Cropping is just another 'tool' to use or ignore as preferred.