Do you crop your photos?

[Sirius Glass]

Which is why it is better to shoot digital. With digital, you can do anything you want with the image, and add black borders at the end, with edge markings for whatever film you would like to assign to your image. Not that I know anything about it. Really.

Besides, when you print with black borders, all those problems enhance authenticity. If you don't see black borders, God only knows what fakery the photographer has been up to in the darkroom. And don't even get me started on cropping. I mean if you think every negative is an opportunity for a scavenger hunt to see if you might have inadvertently gotten something good, go for it. I call that the Cracker Jack approach. You rarely get a decent prize. Sure, every once you do, but as a way of working, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Yes with digital you can pass off images that are not even photographs.

 

[Mike Lopez]

That is my biggest gried on 35mm. I would definely like to have 100% viewfinder on my SLR's.

I would suggest a Nikon F2 for that purpose.

 

[Pieter12]

All this talk about careful composition and walking around the subject and studying for the best angle, etc. only applies to stationary subjects, such as landscapes, still life or architecture. There is no time for such when trying to capture a moment, a person passing through a beam of light from a window or intersection, capturing an expression in a portrait or a moment of action in a moving scene such as sports or wildlife. And no matter how perfect the composition, if you don't have that moment on film, you don't have the good photo that could have been. HCB (remember, they guy who said you should never crop) famously cropped his photo of the man jumping over the puddle. Because it was the instant that mattered, he cropped to get the best composition from that instant. And to hell with aspect ratios. Print what you want. Why should paper or camera manufacturers determine what ratio your photo should be?

 

[faberryman]

Yes with digital you can pass off images that are not even photographs.

Successfully too. Since (almost) nobody prints anymore, it's impossible to know.

 

[Vaughn]

A lot of photographers say it's the final print that counts. I don't think that to be the case for many of us. The process of "capturing" a photo is a contemplative process. You can get out in nature and be one with it. That in itself is enjoyable and positive. I enjoy fishing. But I usually throw them all back. I really don;t care if I eat them. The fun is in the fishing. If you enjoy shooting and derive pleasure from that, do you really need to print all of them? Who were the pros who had thousand of unprocessed exposed film rolls when they died?

Every person has their ways of working and reasons for doing so. Hobbiests, artists, and commercial workers in photography all have different and over-lapping needs and approaches.

Who is this "us" you speak of? The hobbiests? Ask any commercial photographer producing work for a client about the importance of the print (and/or image on a screen). Artists are all over the place. A lot depends on the degree to which one is also a craftsman. In my case the entire process is of equal importance...which is why I rarely change horses in the middle of the stream (radically changing an image during the process). Either the image works or it does not..and sometimes the failures lead to interesting places.

I sometimes take failed platinum prints and cut out nice little sections as postcards.

So you are a fish-torturer eh? I found a mask and snorkel (especially after buying a prescription mask) to be a heck of a lot more fun. Tweek those steelhead on the tail! The government even paid me to do it for awhile.

 

[Sirius Glass]

All this talk about careful composition and walking around the subject and studying for the best angle, etc. only applies to stationary subjects, such as landscapes, still life or architecture. There is no time for such when trying to capture a moment, a person passing through a beam of light from a window or intersection, capturing an expression in a portrait or a moment of action in a moving scene such as sports or wildlife. And no matter how perfect the composition, if you don't have that moment on film, you don't have the good photo that could have been. HCB (remember, they guy who said you should never crop) famously cropped his photo of the man jumping over the puddle. Because it was the instant that mattered, he cropped to get the best composition from that instant. And to hell with aspect ratios. Print what you want. Why should paper or camera manufacturers determine what ratio your photo should be?

I have not had a problem doing that. It takes practice to build the skill. You just need to get out there and work on it.

 

[radiant]

They do not have a square format, so I just turn my nose up and go shoot film.

My Fuji XT-3 has and it I use it very often when photographing in digital. I also use square crop on smartphone.. Square just works.

 

[radiant]

I would suggest a Nikon F2 for that purpose.

I would suggest F3HP but I don't have any single Nikon lens..

 

[Sirius Glass]

My Fuji XT-3 has and it I use it very often when photographing in digital. I also use square crop on smartphone.. Square just works.

It is just like Hasselblad said, "Square is the perfect format."

 

[radiant]

It is just like Hasselblad said, "Square is the perfect format."

Shoot in square and you don't need to crop! /s

 

[Sirius Glass]

Shoot in square and you don't need to crop! /s

 

[Mike Lopez]

I would suggest F3HP but I don't have any single Nikon lens..

The only reason I haven’t picked up an F3 yet (HP or otherwise), is because of the electronics. I had Sover Wong service two F2 bodies for me last year, and I think they’ll still be running long after I am.

 

[radiant]

The only reason I haven’t picked up an F3 yet (HP or otherwise), is because of the electronics. I had Sover Wong service two F2 bodies for me last year, and I think they’ll still be running long after I am.

True. It is a bit itching thing. The "crop" from 100% viewfinder is pretty small anyways, but it is still there. However am I willing to pay hundreds of euros because of this? Maaaybe not. I need to accept the faith that I'm at the lower bin of post-croppers.

 

[Pieter12]

I sometimes take failed platinum prints and cut out nice little sections as postcards.

Cropping!

 

[Vaughn]

I have not had a problem doing that. It takes practice to build the skill. You just need to get out there and work on it.

BINGO, as they say. It is possible to build one's skill to a point where those images that would otherwise have been missed by not cropping, can be made without cropping.

But again, cropping is an important tool in creating an image...and can yield images/prints equally 'valid', equally beautiful, equally meaningful as any uncropped image/print. And vise versa.

Learning how to create images without cropping is another tool in ones toolbox.

 

[Pieter12]

I have not had a problem doing that. It takes practice to build the skill. You just need to get out there and work on it.

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Doing what?

 

[Bill Burk]

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Doing what?

With enough practice you can take pictures having remarkable compositions, true alignment and complete lack of distracting extraneous detail so that the best print from the negative is one that is not cropped.

 

[MattKing]

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Doing what?

I take an insistence on not cropping as meaning that a photographer will only choose to make photographs of things that fit nicely into the viewfinder/ground glass of the camera that they are using, using the lenses and camera positions available to them.
I prefer to choose the aspect ratio of my photographs, and don't like it when my cameras insist I am wrong.

 

[Pieter12]

With enough practice you can take pictures having remarkable compositions, true alignment and complete lack of distracting extraneous detail so that the best print from the negative is one that is not cropped.

You can take even more pictures having remarkable compositions, true alignment and complete lack of distracting extraneous detail if you crop with care. And no one will notice any difference or care for that matter.

 

[radiant]

You can take even more pictures having remarkable compositions, true alignment and complete lack of distracting extraneous detail if you crop with care. And no one will notice any difference or care for that matter.

Since when we have discussed about the end result (finished photographs) on this forum? It is far more important if you pre-rinse or not! /s

 

[Pieter12]

Since when we have discussed about the end result (finished photographs) on this forum? It is far more important if you pre-rinse or not! /s

I have given up on pre-rinsing my digital work.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Sorry, I'm a bit confused. Doing what?

Cropping before taking the photograph.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I take an insistence on not cropping as meaning that a photographer will only choose to make photographs of things that fit nicely into the viewfinder/ground glass of the camera that they are using, using the lenses and camera positions available to them.
I prefer to choose the aspect ratio of my photographs, and don't like it when my cameras insist I am wrong.

You assumed wrong. One does the cropping in the view finder to minimizing cropping in the darkroom. Not all compositions will work in any given format, so then the object is to crop the best one can in the view finder to have less cropping done in the darkroom and keeping the maximum negative area to work with. Yes, one can use a wide angle lens and crop like mad later the way news photographers did with press cameras OR one can use a wide angle lens, machine gun everything and then spend hours pouring over prints to find a tiny part of a photograph to work on and then complaining about the size of the grain. It is much better to become a skilled photographer in the first place.

 

[MattKing]

You assumed wrong. One does the cropping in the view finder to minimizing cropping in the darkroom. Not all compositions will work in any given format, so then the object is to crop the best one can in the view finder to have less cropping done in the darkroom and keeping the maximum negative area to work with. Yes, one can use a wide angle lens and crop like mad later the way news photographers did with press cameras OR one can use a wide angle lens, machine gun everything and then spend hours pouring over prints to find a tiny part of a photograph to work on and then complaining about the size of the grain. It is much better to become a skilled photographer in the first place.

So in short, crop whenever you need or want to.

 

[Pieter12]

I think there are a couple of ways to look at cropping. One, to fine tune a composition in the darkroom--exactly line up a horizon, for example or to eliminate an extraneous, distracting item along the edge of the frame. The other is to radically crop the image to home in on the subject, which may be lost or not well-placed as originally shot. Both are valid as far as I am concerned. Bad cropping or composition in the final print is unforgivable.

On the other hand I have seen some nicely-composed prints that bore the hell out of me, the lighting might be flat, the subject matter ordinary and ordinarily photographed, the image just unappealing. But it was composed carefully in camera and not cropped in printing.