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To crop or not to crop.....

57andrew

By 57andrew
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lct

lct

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I agree....if he would of taken the five steps forward as was earlier mentioned the shot/moment would have gone,then there`d be no shot at all...

That is more or less what happened to HCB with his famous Gare St Lazare picture. He shot from behind a palissade and said that he could not see anything IIRC.

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Michael Hiles

Michael Hiles

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I don't think Capa meant this in a literal sense, which is how everybody interprets it.

 

My suspicion is that you are right. My thought is that Capa meant "don't waste space in your frame with things that extraneous to your picture". We have all seen "portraits" of Uncle Harry at Yosemite where the old boy is so small in the frame that he is indistinguishable from from a scratch on the film, and the picture is in fact a landscape of the mountains. My Uncle Harry passed away a few years ago.:D

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Michael Hiles

Michael Hiles

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That is more or less what happened to HCB with his famous Gare St Lazare picture. He shot from behind a palissade and said that he could not see anything IIRC.

 

That is right - he was on the wrong side of a fence. The negative shows part of the fence on the left - and we and he probably think he was wise to press the button.

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AlbertoDeRoma

AlbertoDeRoma

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I crop all the time. Unless I have plenty of time to frame everything perfectly, I'd rather shoot a bit wider and crop later. I would have missed many shots - and many interesting background details that I hadn't noticed at the time - if I didn't shoot that way.

 

Alberto

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lars_bergquist

lars_bergquist

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A picture is not Reality. It is not even the TRVTH about Reality. It is a picture. Remember Magritte: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe".

 

Pictures are not made by Reality. They are made by people.

 

The very fact of your being there -- of what camera you carry -- of which lens you have mounted -- of where you stand -- of in what direction you turn -- of what you leave out, emphatically! -- of when you press the button, certainly -- all this is editing (pre-editing, if you will). Adding some cropping, adds very little to the heap. Keep your pants on.

 

If somebody else made the picture, he has 'droit moral' to it, i.e. we should not alter it without his permission. If you made it, you decide. You're sovereign.

 

Reality is 'out there' as the physicists say. It is not in your camera. It is not on a piece of paper, or on a monitor screen. Physical reality does not give a damn about your pictures of it. So go and take some pictures. You can even write captions for them, if you like. Better you than some other idiot.

 

The old man who was once a picture editor

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lct

lct

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....Reality is 'out there' as the physicists say. It is not in your camera. It is not on a piece of paper, or on a monitor screen. Physical reality does not give a damn about your pictures of it...

It does for photo journalists Lars. Fortunately i would say.

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aesop

aesop

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...I am still honing my compositional skills via the viewfinder. Strict 25 X 37 is fun and is achievable, but it requires discipline. Oh, and ability. So definitely no cropping - print it like you shot it and you will grow. Chaqun à son goût, non?

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delander †

delander †

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That is right - he was on the wrong side of a fence. The negative shows part of the fence on the left - and we and he probably think he was wise to press the button.

 

It is interesting to note that the 'behind the gare saint-lazare' image is sometimes reproduced in books with a black border, to give the impression that it is not cropped.

 

I notice that in the recent catalogue of the MOMA exhibition none of the photos are reproduced with the black frame.

 

I try not to crop and I do like the 3x2 ratio.

 

Jeff

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lct

lct

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...IChaqun à son goût, non?

Oui bien sûr et HCB serait content car le principe d'intégrité était primordial à l'agence Magnum.

(Yes of course and HCB would be happy as principle of integrity was paramount at Magnum.)

Nos we are not all PJs are we.

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aesop

aesop

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Oui bien sûr et HCB serait content car le principe d'intégrité était primordial à l'agence Magnum.

(Yes of course and HCB would be happy as principle of integrity was paramount at Magnum.)

Nos we are not all PJs are we.

 

 

...fully agree, we are not all PJs. Hence my comment, "print it like you shot it and you will grow". Unless of course you are already fully grown via PP.

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iShutterbug

iShutterbug

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This is a religious issue, not a technical one.

 

I grew up in the church of black borders. One filed out the carrier of one's Focomat & printed the full frame.

 

I became an apostate in midlife, when I realized color images didn't look as good with black borders.

 

Then in later life I was lured by the Photoshop Satan to use the Ruler tool to straighten horizons, & then the Perspective Crop to overcome at least some of my wide-angle distortion.

 

But I have vowed never to lose my faith by departing from the 2:3 image ratio. When Barnack came down from the mountain, God had dictated right there on his tablet that this is The True Ratio for small-format photography.

 

I believe in God & Barnack because to perfect our previsualizing souls, we must forever pursue the path of seeing the world not as mortal flesh would, but as cameras do. Salvation lies in seeing the whole composition that the camera will record. Otherwise we might as well just go to hell by the fool's path of cropping.

 

Beware also of zoom lenses; they too will render your efforts at composition imperfect in the eyes of the apostle HCB, because you will never learn the Dance of Life that places you in the path of the Decisive Moment.

 

There are of course other faiths. The 666 people – excuse me, 6X6 – previsualize in squares. I do not judge them, but pray that they too will find the Way.

 

Amen.

Amen, that was brilliant!

 

In a parallel universe W. Eugene Smith (whose house I once lived around the corner from as a youngster)

 

said "The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera."

 

Also: "An artist must be ruthlessly selfish."

 

And: "Hardening of the categories causes art disease."

 

(Quotes from website dedicated to him.)

 

Don

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jaapv

jaapv

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Disregarding image quality issues (somewhat to the background by high-Mp digital), there is not much principally different in cropping down reality by choosing a longer focal length than by cutting off edges in the darkroom/computer. Following the purists' philosophy that means that the only valid photograph would be one taken with a 360 degrees fisheye....:rolleyes::p

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pgk

pgk

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To me cropping is an evil necessity. If I can get a shot straight from the camera that doesn't need cropping, so much the better..... but since I'm not a perfect photographer sometimes I simply have to waste part of the frame and crop!

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