crop or not?

[Dew]

im going through a stage right now .. fighting my inner demons

im finding myself not cropping a lot of my photos ... even sometimes when it clearly needs to be cropped (based on "standards" )

so i had to check with the hubby, see what he's doing .. he says, "I never crop my photos ... NEVER EVER!" </end stern face>

do u crop your photos? ... even if there is distracting things in the foreground and background :?

 

[Geronimo]

I hardly ever crop my photos. But there are times when I see that it adds to the image. But I try to do as move composing in the camera as possible.

 

[vonnagy]

I guess the better photographer you are, the less you have to crop because you frame your pictures right the first time. I end up cropping about 75% of the time. hehehe hopefully i can some day reach the point of only cropping 25% of the time!

 

[Dew]

thats the thing with me ... even if there is chaos going on in the background .. somehow, im starting to like it ... my inner demon is telling me that it adds more character to the photo ... more "realness" :roll:

i dont know what to think about that .. i dont know whether its bad or good ... either i dont want to crop it .. or i dont know where to crop it :?

 

[LaFoto]

Well, in order to be able to take part in the vote, I would need to know the real meaning of the word "to crop a photo". I am guessing, from the ongoing discussion, that it means "cutting off part of the edges", and ONLY that. But somehow I'm also beginning to believe that it CAN mean: to digitally (or by some darkroom techniques that I'm not familiar with, either) cut out part of the background. Is this so?

If the latter applies to your question, Dew, then I must say: I don't, for I'm not able to - I haven't got the knowledge.

As to my first suggestion (cutting off the edges), I must say I have done it on occacion, with the actual print as well as a couple of my digitalised (i.e. scanned) photos. Either I ordered an enlargement and cut out what I really wanted, or, in the computer... well, no need to explain that.

But I have done it only on occasion. I don't make it my habit.
Actually, I much, much rather see a photo like it was taken, like things WERE by the time the photographer took their picture, from HIS/HER very angle etc. You see?

But I'd still like to know what "cropping" really means to most of you here!

 

[Dew]

cropping as to cutting off edges or a huge part of the photo that was originally there ... and u castrated it .. cut if off

im having a situation over here, its not that im becoming a "purist" (jeese, please no )

 

[LaFoto]

Thank you.
Well, I still had to go for the "Nope, never", although it is not quite true, for there was no other option. "Yes, most times" most certainly doesn't apply.

 

[vonnagy]

hey dew,

i sort of have the opposite demon - i just want to simplify and minimize, strip down get down to the heart of the photo. Or at least, what I think is the heart of the photo.

Alot of pictures i see here i say to myself wow awesome photo - but i wish i was cropped so i would emphasize the subject matter or theme more. (even saw one of doxx's awesome city photos and thought it should be cropped but shhhh - don't tell him i said that )

extraneous stuff always seems to annoy me. A lot my creative style comes from my father who is Austrian who puts on his 'ernste Gesicht' and says you must simplify simplify simplify!

*just notices there is strong germanic influence in this thread*

I remember reading somewhere that Picasso was nearly arrested because he broke into a museum - only to paint over over one of his pictures because he wanted to get right.

By no means am I comparing myself to the artistic abilities of picasso, but it simply reflects my view that just because the shutter has been released and the photo has been printed (or downloaded) does mean that the photographs journey ends there For me its whole new adventure of possibilities and just as exciting as taking the shot!

good thread dew - its got me thinking 'bout stuff

 

[Dew]

not to get off topic too much *but feel free*

i dont really know much about paintings .. im doing a personal project now (u probably already know .. i've mentioned it one-thousand times )

i asked the painters how long they've been working on a piece and when is it considered finished (i ask a lot of questions before a shoot, i want the personality to shine through) .. they tell me that its never really finished .. they had a painting that was "finished" 7 months ago .. and their still working on it :shock: .. so i feel ya

anywho ... i guess im evolving, im not comfortable yet with my "non-cropping" self ... but it looks very interesting

(im just finished scanning the negs, i'll post them soon so u can see my "chaos" ) :shock:

 

[wwjoeld]

the only time i crop os when it is going to take away from the photo itself, other than that i almost never crop.

I sse the image in my head before i press the shutter. For me cropping somtimes takes away from that image that i had thought of before the photo was even taken

 

[ksmattfish]

Once again, I'm voting in the middle. I crop when the image needs it.

I love the look of an uncropped print with a nice black border. I love that black border, but I will not Photoshop it in or use darkroom techniques to put it in. If you see any of my pics with a black border then you are getting the entire neg printed from a DIY neg carrier.

I love the feeling that I was able to capture the image perfectly with the camera.

I love the idea that I am taking maximum advantage of the entire area of the negative.

That being said, send those inner demons packing, Dew. There is nothing wrong with cropping an image, particularly if it makes it better. I used to feel the same way, and I would agonize about cropping an image even if I felt that it needed it. I've read the writing of many "masters" of photography and examined their work; skilled cropping is just part of the process.

I was against cropping when I was starting out using only 35mm SLRs. I didn't want to waste any of the neg, and I wanted to show that I could crop in the camera. That was good practice, and I think that I am pretty good at cropping with the camera. But using many different kinds of cameras since then, most without accurate viewfinders, or even any viewfinder at all, and using negs up to 20 square inches in area, I've learned that cropping is just part of working towards a good image.

Besides, I've come to love the square and panoramic image formats, and sometimes I want to get them out of cameras that just shoot plain old rectangles.

Try to crop in the camera, but if the image needs cropping later, feel no guilt, for most of the great photographs were cropped.

 

[tr0gd0o0r]

For me , at the moment, it really depends on how I'm working with the image. If someone else develops and prints it, it never gets cropped. In the darkroom, I rarely ever leave with the image completely intact on a print. Digitally, I haven't completely mastered the simple crop tool yet, so I've got a ways to go before I know for sure. But I agree that it is just part of the process.

 

[terri]

Once again, I'm voting in the middle. I crop when the image needs it.

That's me, too. I feel like I do better when I give an example of an image I felt NEEDED cropping - and why.

I felt I got two completely different *feels* with this image. The first one I thought was dramatic and scary-looking. But I loved this old house and wanted to hand paint the image and make it a friendly house, too - I wanted the house to be the star of the image - so I cropped it to fill the frame with it for coloring.

 

[Dew]

now i must say terri .. im loving the first one better ... the trees somehow completes the picture

 

[terri]

Dew, I'm glad to hear that, frankly - that IS the way I composed it originally. And in this forum, I'd bet there would be an overwhelming preference for the original image. But if I showed it to my handcolor site folks, they'd be talking about how to add color to make it better.

I can't state a preference. Like you said, all of my photos are my children, and each is complete to me in its own way. They just are what they are - cropped, uncropped, colored or B&W.