Crop, or not?

There is a decision you need to make both when shooting and later, when cropping in “post”. Namely, how to crop.

Perhaps you “fill the frame”: often  good technique to add quality to a picture. Yes, you can cut off heads, etc, as in this recent shot of my favourite model:

Or you frame carefully to both include the subject and to exclude the distractions that make an image look amateurish – this, you often do in post. In order to simplify, I cropped out some small distractions in the following set-up shot in post-production in Lightroom:

In both cases, keep one thing in mind: you may want to crop to particular aspect ratios. Like 5×7, or 8×10. In that case if you have shot too close, you cannot print at your selected ratio without losing essential elements.

That is why

  • I sometimes shoot a little wide, so I can crop later.
  • On the other hand, I am not bound to using the aspect rations the frame industry wants me to use.

Your choice – as long as you know what the consequences are!

 

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