Finally.....

Inklingforsake · Mar 20, 2017

Hello. I am a beginner and learning. Is it ok to cut off limbs while shooting portraits?

jcdeboever · Mar 20, 2017

I wouldn't have cut off the limbs in #1. Her legs were a gregarious focal point. However, I am an idiot when it comes to portraiture photography. If she was sitting for me in an oil painting, her legs are in there as I see them as a super power for her eyes. When painting, anytime I was presented with an opportunity to elongate an image computationally, I took it. It is rare but this is one. It is similar to getting in close to a subject but can have a more dramatic effect. Very rare but it is was here. Great eye beginner.

Derrel · Mar 20, 2017

Unless the shot is a full-lenbgth shot, there'sgoing to be some cropping of limbs.

Regarding shot #1 and her legs: I thought the bottom of the frame cut-off point of shot #1 was pretty good; I might have cropped it even a bit higher, to show a bit less of the bottom of the thigh. Cropping off a bit more of the bottom would have visually slimmed down the thigh, by literally showing less of it in the picture! But there's a balance...showing the knees and the thigh creates a certain type of appeal to a certain percentage of the populaton, and shows the type of clothing she was actually wearing, so there's that issue.

If one looks on-line there are some Classic Rules of Cropping regarding where it is okay to crop and where it is frowned upon to crop a person's body and or limbs or joints. Honestly, I think those rules carry a lot less weight in 2017 than they did in 1899. I think by now we realize that we're dealing with photographic representations of people, and that we're not really lopping off fingers, etc. Still...the issue does come up a lot.

ronlane · Mar 21, 2017

Shooting with an 85mm on a crop sensor, I backed up to get a 3/4 shot in #1. I thought about cropping as @Derrel mentioned but I do not like to crop along the thigh like that. I don't think it looks good.

@Inklingforsake as @Derrel said, you are going to be cropping for anything less than a full body shot. The "rule" for this is to not crop at the joints. Which is another thought I had when looking at #1 and why I cropped just below the knee. (I'll have to look at this image in LR to make sure that I acutally had much if any room below this.)