It's good advice. One thing that I notice anywhere but certainly on Flickr which is where I hang out a bit, photographically speaking, is that there's so often extraneous material in a photo. For example, someone might post a photo in which a blank and uninteresting sky makes up 50% of the image.
It's great to get it right in camera, but sometimes you are at the limit of your camera's zoom or you just didn't happen to see the best composition when you were composing the photo. But you can always crop in post, whatever program you use, and it doesn't have to be a fancy program like Photoshop. Any photo program will support cropping.
Yes, you are losing pixels, but many images will still be big enough if you want to print them, and let's face it, most images don't get printed anyway, and the image will still be fine and dandy to show online.
Having said that, sometimes you want context, so tighter isn't always preferable. For example: if you are taking a portrait of a person, you may want to show where they are. If someone is sitting on a bench under a tree or by a river, it may (or may not) be important to include the tree or the river. In this photo, the autumn trail was a very important part of the image, so I wouldn't want to crop it. Context can be important.
However, the exceptions can also prove the rule. Below is an original photo followed by a cropped version. They both have merit, but I decided that I liked the tight crop better in this case as I find that there is less to pull my eyes away from the subject.
Great points!
ReplyDeleteYou brought back so many good memories with this post, AC. When I met and married my husband in 1958 he had just left Life magazine and was setting up his free-lance photography business. We set up a room in our apartment where he developed his film, printed his photos and dried them, etc. He loved to fool around with cropping and would often show me comparisons as you have done here. I agree that I prefer the up close shot ... and I'll bet Dick would too!
ReplyDeleteThis is a good lesson. I do often crop my photos but probably not enough, sorry to say. Now I'm looking at the photos I posted of our trip and I'm seeing where I could have done a better got. Yikes!
ReplyDeleteAnd gosh... I don't know... I rather like both photos of the musician.
ReplyDeleteI don't often crop, because especially if it's a landscape photo, I would like the sky in it as well. It can make the photo even more dramatic. Then again, sometimes a photo comes with strange people or buildings or other things that are not necessary or wanted and then I will crop.
ReplyDeleteYour cropped version seems to be sharper, more in focus and more to the point than the non-cropped version.
I tend to like to crop, myself, because it gives me another chance to capture the image the way I was imagining it in my mind.
ReplyDeleteYour advice to "get closer" is something that sadly people taking photos of others fail to do most times. It's always puzzling to me that in the day and age of "selfies" we can let someone use our phone or camera to snap a shot of us together and then we get a "body" shot vs. a close-up head shot. It's why we prefer to use our devices to take our own pictures. Thankfully, we have become quite adept at cell phone shots and 2 of my Olympus digital cameras feature a self-portrait feature which works quite well. That said, I agreed with your cropping of the musician to focus on he and his instrument. The shot of Sue was lovely to show the fall colors she was standing among.
ReplyDeleteShe is gorgeous, your wife! Well done!
ReplyDelete