Alan Edward Klein
Member
I crop pictures I take of paintings. Those artists don't know what they're doing.
I agree. The composition comes first. But that created a problem for me and maybe others if they want to standardize a group of pictures for consistency.Not only do I crop, I don’t even stick to the standard aspect ratios on the final print sizes. There are no rules. The subject determines it all.
You beat me to it, I was going to post the same Elliott Erwitt contact sheet.The idea there ever was a taboo about cropping is one of these too oft repeated myth.
If he did, in 1946, a lot of others were too, and still are:
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Only lazy people never crop.
Even alternative processing when using a full negative to contact print I will not always run my painted on emulsion to go fully to the boarder.
As I remember it was HCB who launched the modern never-crop taboo, and thousands of would-be photographers followed his dictum. Something about seeing the picture in its entirety in the viewfinder.
Following compositional rules of any kind is like keeping a wild animal in a cage.
Conformist.No, good photographers crop when they take the photograph, the rest were lazy from the start or are not good yet.
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As I remember it was HCB who launched the modern never-crop taboo, and thousands of would-be photographers followed his dictum. Something about seeing the picture in its entirety in the viewfinder.
I agree. The composition comes first. But that created a problem for me and maybe others if they want to standardize a group of pictures for consistency.
That happened with me when I made slide shows that also had short video clips to show on 16: 9 monitors or 4k TV's which also have 16:9 formats. As I sequenced through the pictures, each still picture was a different size and those were different than all the videos which shoot at 16:9 and fill up the entire screen. Since the stills didn't fill up the screen, you get the black bars where there's no picture.
So, I tried cropping all the 4:3 stills to 16:9s. That created a problem. Because of the long horizontal compared to the heights, I often had to cut off people's feet, or worse, their heads. For On many, I just couldn't find the right crop to get it to 16:9 without ruining the composition.
So the next time I went on vacation, I set the camera to 16:9 format. At first, it was a little perplexing. But within an hour, finding the right composition proved no more difficult with 16:9 than 4:3 or 3:2. So now when I put together the slide show all the stills and the videos fill the full 16:9 screen.
Others who make books might want to keep the formats the same for all the pictures as well. So you ought to think about this before you shoot and select a crop that you can be consistent in. Of course, that requires a little more care that you get the picture in the camera. Otherwise, you might be chopping off feet as I did.
That's me. Old habits die hard. I don't experiment enough. But that's who I am. Trying to be someone I'm not is like putting on someone else's shoes. If what I do and the way I say it reflects who I am, what's wrong with that? Should I copy someone else and be who I'm not? At some point, we have to accept who we are and go with it and not look back. Otherwise, you're always looking over your shoulder and never happy. It's Ok to be who you are.Consistency can be the enemy of creativity.
The "decisive moment" usually comes quicker for a street shot than a landscape.
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