Cropping - good or evil?

[blansky]

In the other thread that started this, Michael A Smith said about cropping in the camera...

For the photographer, the point is not the picture, the point is the experience. Having the experience of seeing your photograph complete on the ground glass is an intense, deeply pleasurable and satisfying experience. That is what it is all about. The picture is a bonus.

Thinking about this later I contemplated it in my own circumstance - a commercial portrait photographer.

It is like going fishing and throwing back all the fish you catch. It is all about the experience of catching fish and not having the fish. However a professional fisherman would starve doing this.

For myself, to bring in a customer and showing them the image of their child on the ground glass, and them saying "that will be $1500 please" somehow doesn't offer me too much hope of collecting.

I know this is carrying this to the absurd but that's just the kind of guy I am.

Michael, please don't feel the need to respond because I do know exactly what you are referring to, and I know your comments are about the way you personally feel about having the image as perfect as possible on the ground glass. I also realize that you contact print.

But for you, to some extent, and for a lot of us, the end result, the finished print hanging on the wall is the goal. For some of us, the print, is where it's at, not even necessarily the experience. Our priorities are the final print. Everything else is gravy.

Michael McBlane

 

[victor]

david - if i gate u rite than cool.
i hardly belive that i am correctly understood, may be i write to fast and dont check it maybe... dont know, so im not sure any more i do understand others. soryy im a bit primintive on the net, i prefer talking eye to eye, than i make it clear to me and to others much eassier. but one "nice thing" happened to me on the net - as far as i "understand", i belong to "elitists" or something like that.

 

[noblebeast]

Well, according to the poll at least, the "croppers" are ahead in the popular vote. We'll have to watch out for the five Large Format judges on the Photography Supreme Court though. They may swoop in and negate our votes, and then cropping will be illegal (and no doubt immoral). Then we can expect that burning and dodging will be declared equally reprehensible (Only Satan likes to burn, and isn't 'dodging' also like lying?). And you may as well get rid of any filters you have before there is a midnight raid by the Office of Homeland Photographic Purity, because only a total failure needs to alter their negative with a colored piece of glass. I mean really, if you can't get the perfect negative without those silly little crutches don't even remove your camera from the case. Come to think of it, isn't using a tripod also a form of cheating? Handheld shots only! And then soon cameras themselves will be taken away, and the photographers will paint their body with liquid emulsion and climb inside a refrigerator box and become an interactive pinhole camera (talk about exposing yourself to Art). And only really fat photographers will be able to capture the enormity of the landscape (Hey! There may be hope for me in this whole scenario. Excuse me while I dial Domino's Pizza)
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This has been a test of the Early Sarcasm Alert System. If this had been an actual posting, you would have been instructed where to go and what to think.

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[PaulH]

On the Housatonic River in Connecticut it is fly fishing only, release your catch.

 

[AllanD]

Time to close this thread ?

 

[Leon]

yes please Allan - none of it really matters anyway. crop, dont crop, just enjoy doing it.

 

[RAP]

David,

Were these paintings part of a larger whole? Did the artists first paint much larger canvases and then cut them down into smaller sections to show what they wanted and hide their mistakes? No they did not. They knew from the start, the dimensions, format they wanted to work in, and completed their masterpieces within that format.

Experience and abilities is the key, which grow with time and practice.

Thanks for taking the time to scan and post the images.

Side thought, how many panoramic photographs are created non panoramic formats?

 

[Ole]

At least one painting by Edvard Munch has a panel added to one side - he decided he should have used a bigger board (he painted on board, not canvas).

As to panoramic, I have taken some with the intention of using them as panoramic. Since I don't own a panoramic camera, they are necessarily cropped from a larger negative. Does that mean I shouldn't have taken those photographs?

 

[RAP]

How do you hide the joint of additional panals?

I don't own a panoramic camera either but have croped a few images into a more panoramic format. They work and at the time did not see the images as panoramic.

I do not plan on going out and buying a panoramic camera or back just to accomodate those few instances where they may apply. However, you could mark a panoramic format onto your ground glass and view the image in two formats simultaneously. I have a 6x7 format on my 4x5 glass because I shoot 6x7 color and 4x5 b&w. It also helps with framing decisions at the time of shooting.

 

[clay]

Cropping is fine as long as you don't get caught. It should only be done in the privacy of your own home. Ideally there should be no one in the house.

 

[Donald Miller]

Cropping is fine as long as you don't get caught. It should only be done in the privacy of your own home. Ideally there should be no one in the house.

Clay...that may be fine for you...but my parents told me that I would go blind if I cropped.

 

[noblebeast]

Did Holbein crop?:



What about Whistler? Did he crop?:



Maybe Gauguin cropped--that slacker vegging out in Tahiti:



Vermeer looks like he was using a long lens, or maybe he just cropped to get that compression of space. No way did he get that close to this lady. After all the picture is about the size of a postcard. He definitely cropped it down from a bigger picture, I'd say:

Not real sure on any of those, but what film were they using? Is it some sort of new "Fiber Grain" emulsion?

 

[Donald Miller]

Did Holbein crop?:



What about Whistler? Did he crop?:



Maybe Gauguin cropped--that slacker vegging out in Tahiti:



Vermeer looks like he was using a long lens, or maybe he just cropped to get that compression of space. No way did he get that close to this lady. After all the picture is about the size of a postcard. He definitely cropped it down from a bigger picture, I'd say:

Not real sure on any of those, but what film were they using? Is it some sort of new "Fiber Grain" emulsion?

That is the new Giclee is has endlessly variable ISO, grain characteristics, and color saturation...wonderful stuff according to the manufacturers claims.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

My point is that we really have a limited set of aspect ratios available in photography if we refuse to crop, and even if there is a format that would correspond to most of the proportions used in painting, we usually only have one or two formats available to us at any given time, so we may previsualize a certain crop or not, and might decide after the fact that a certain proportion works for a certain image, and just as painters, we should not be slaves to the manufacturers' paper sizes or film sizes.

There is no photographic format that corresponds to Holbein's "Christ in the Tomb" (well, maybe on one of those swing-lens cameras there is something close), and one doesn't usually see full length photographic portraits like Whistler's as vertical panoramas, but should such images be off-limits to photographers because film or paper doesn't come in those sizes?

Another issue is to consider what counts as cropping. If one travels with 5x7", 8x10", 11x14", and 8x20" cameras at the ready and chooses among them, is that the moral equivalent of cropping? If one uses a Sinar Zoom back? Is the Xpan a tool for cheating? Is there a difference between using a wide lens on a 6x6 camera and cropping the bottom third of the frame and using a lens of comparable focal length on a view camera and using front rise to achieve the same composition in rectangular format?

 

[Francesco]

I feel that changing lenses, changing tripod positions, changing backs when out with LF gear are not moral equivalent of cropping. It is part of seeing, of visualisation IF the process leads to a full frame print. If I know that a scene is better at 4x5 before the shutter is triggered means that I have made a visual assessment at the same time that the emotional assessment was made. If I cropped my 8x10 negative into that same 4x5 area of interest in the darkroom (assuming I made the decision only after I have seen the negative or the first proof) means that whatever emoitonal impact a scene had for me has somehow changed hours or days later. Why this happened? For me it was because I did not connect with or see the scene properly. Or maybe I was rushing or I was hoping that by using the shotgun approach I might get something later on.

The results are what matter. If you like what you do then keep doing it. But this is a survey about the means to an end. I personally like to be disciplined in my means because it helps to justify my ends. I do not expect that criteria from anyone else nor do I need to know how they got there. I prefer to look at photographs.

 

[Donald Miller]

I feel that changing lenses, changing tripod positions, changing backs when out with LF gear are not moral equivalent of cropping. It is part of seeing, of visualisation IF the process leads to a full frame print. If I know that a scene is better at 4x5 before the shutter is triggered means that I have made a visual assessment at the same time that the emotional assessment was made. If I cropped my 8x10 negative into that same 4x5 area of interest in the darkroom (assuming I made the decision only after I have seen the negative or the first proof) means that whatever emoitonal impact a scene had for me has somehow changed hours or days later. Why this happened? For me it was because I did not connect with or see the scene properly. Or maybe I was rushing or I was hoping that by using the shotgun approach I might get something later on.

The results are what matter. If you like what you do then keep doing it. But this is a survey about the means to an end. I personally like to be disciplined in my means because it helps to justify my ends. I do not expect that criteria from anyone else nor do I need to know how they got there. I prefer to look at photographs.

Personally, I agree with what Francesco, Michael, George and others have said. I understand that there are different approaches to this matter. I think that Francesco made a key point when he addressed the matter of "connecting" or "seeing" the scene properly. I think that the "connection" happens when we "see" the scene properly at the time of exposure.

It must be understood that those mentioned above are all engaged in landscape photography as a portion or total of their work. A person photographing a less stationary subject could still pursue full frame images if they chose. I do recognize that my way of practicing my art is not the only way and it may not be the way that others choose.

It is this "connection" that comes through in the print.

Have I ever cropped? Of course...Do I view cropping as an option to me today? Very rarely if ever.

To me,personally, in the practice of my art...cropping is a lack of discipline. I think that art is about disciplined practice of technique that must first be learned and then practiced to produce predictable results consistant with the artists vision. This condition, I believe, transcends all truly artistic pursuits.

 

[George Losse]

This is really getting to the point of beating dead horses here.

We are not painters, we are photographers, we don't have the luxury of drawing and redrawing a scene or making up fantasy compositions, we have to view a subject in front of us and put that scene on film, all in a fraction of a second, not days or weeks.

If you don't want to crop, then don't.
If you do want to crop, then do.
If you don't want to be bound by manufactures film formats, then don't be.
But please don't show me paintings to justify your beliefs, at least find examples within our medium. I'm sure they are out there.
If the image works hanging on the wall, wonderful. If it doesn't, then learn to make it better.
One way to improve composition was suggested in another thread. If that way doesn't work for your beliefs, formats, styles, or subjects then, by all means find other ways. And if people are so full of their own abilities that they feel they can't or don't need to improve, that is fine too.

The bottom line is that those things really only matter to you as the photographer.

What matters to me, as a viewer (or possible collector) of your work, is if the work is good or not. If its not, I don't care if you cropped it or not. I'll keep on looking for someone else to collect.

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[bmac]

LOL

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I completely agree that the bottom line is whether the work justifies itself, but in this regard, I see no distinction between painting, photography, or any other two-dimensional medium. Whatever the medium, the frame must have some proportion. We may choose the proportion, or we may let someone else choose it for us.

I also don't care whether work is cropped or not, but knowledge of whether it is cropped will say something about what the work means and what the photographer's intentions were.

For those of us who work in static subjects, we do have the luxury of revisiting, reframing, reproportioning, rephotographing. For those who work in still life and the studio, arguably all compositions are fantasy compositions. In much of the nineteenth century, before the age of relatively high speed film, no photographic decisions were made in the fraction of a second.

 

[George Losse]

David,

I completely agree that the bottom line is whether the work justifies itself, but in this regard, I see no distinction between painting, photography, or any other two-dimensional medium. Whatever the medium, the frame must have some proportion. We may choose the proportion, or we may let someone else choose it for us.

In painting and other two dimensional work you can sketch out what you want and make the decision about the size canvas (or other material) you want.
If you were to apply that thought to photography then, you would determine what format you want to use to best display your vision of the subject in front of you. But then we would be talking about an experience that is happening during the exposure.

Most typical examples of cropping (the topic here) are not done during that time, they happen back in the darkroom or studio. And can often be a second guessing of the composition of the subject. (Portraits of moving children aside)

Also please note that I said "can often be a second guessing" this is not meant to say that anybody here on this board is doing this.

I also don't care whether work is cropped or not, but knowledge of whether it is cropped will say something about what the work means and what the photographer's intentions were.

Yes, but in the real world, we don't get that chance to look into the photographer's mind very often. So that knowledge is not always given to us.

For those of us who work in static subjects, we do have the luxury of revisiting, reframing, reproportioning, rephotographing. For those who work in still life and the studio, arguably all compositions are fantasy compositions. In much of the nineteenth century, before the age of relatively high speed film, no photographic decisions were made in the fraction of a second.

Now here is where I have to totally disagree with you. Every time you go out and shoot even it is the same subject you have shot before, it is not the same, and you are not the same. The lighting has changed, a car is park in a different place, some trash got picked up from the scene, some got placed in the scene, a new building is behind the subject, or an old one is missing and that causes the light to change. Whatever, its not exactly the same.

A still life in the studio, ok, that could be the same. But still your not the same, you will at least have the experience of the first shoot and be armed with the knowledge of what worked and what didn't in the first shoot.

That fraction of a second (that we now shoot with, I'm not a hundred years old) only happens at that one moment in time. You can never shoot that same moment again. You can never see the subject the same way again because you are only at that moment in time once. Which is why they came up with the saying "You only have one chance to make a first impression."

 

[noblebeast]

This is really getting to the point of beating dead horses here.

Fire up the coals for the Bar-B-Q, 'cause that meat's nice and tender by now! Who's bringin' the ketchup?

 

[Aggie]

..

 

[Francesco]

I like this thread very much because it concerns seeing, visualisation, intent and discipline - ingredients that I need to make better photographs. Maybe a less charged title for this thread would have been Cropping - intentional or not?

Also for me the word cropping implies accidental or repair or salvaging somehow. To decide to "crop" before shutter release does not imply cropping it implies previsualisation. This implies a choice while the other implies no choice.