Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: Melodi on May 09, 2009, 02:45:09 pm
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It seems that there must be some history that I'm missing regarding the comments from those who like to compose with the view finder versus those who like the freedom of cropping later.
I've heard and read comments about the conceit of those who like to use the view finder and don't like to crop later. I even heard some strong opinions on this in an LL instructional video.
I feel it to be a very different experience and do prefer one over the other, and I must add, this is at this time in my life and experience...Things change.
I don't see any need for regarding one or the other as a correct or incorrect way or consider people in either group to be conceited or not conceited, and certainly don't exclude people in either group as artists.
I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?
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There's nothing "conceited" about getting the composition in-camera as close as possible to that of the final print. Cropping throws away resolution; it logically follows that to the extent resolution and sharpness are desirable attributes of the final print (and they always are to some degree; it is impossible to have a meaningful image without some resolution/sharpness), cropping is an undesirable step and should be kept to a minimum.
Most photographers prefer to compose the shot in-camera so that the only cropping necessary is to alter the aspect ratio of the image, say from 3:2 ratio of a 35mm DSLR to the 4:5 ratio of an 8x10 print. Ideally in this example, only the ends of the original frame would be cropped away; the sides would be left alone. Murphy's law dictates that this ideal will not always be the case, but that does not mean it is is not a goal worth striving for whenever possible. Failing to do so is no less a sin than not bothering to focus properly; both have a similarly negative impact on the resolution and sharpness of the final print.
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The Cropping Police are an insidious threat to Photograph Freedom. Just say no to Creeping Cropism. Or I'll report you to the Perspective Police.
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I use small cameras, but still crop. Cropping is very valuable because I can spend much more time in the field looking for possible images and capturing "around" them a dozen different ways, then be concerned about rotation (that comes first) and cropping when I'm back in the lab.
I've taken the perfect photo many times, and more often than not, any cropping also introduces the necessity of a slight rotation, perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 degree. You can judge rotation by horizon lines etc., but in the end, you have to look (not once, but even days later) and ask "is it right?"
Once those two things are out of the way, the other fixes can be applied.
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It seems that there must be some history that I'm missing regarding the comments from those who like to compose with the view finder versus those who like the freedom of cropping later.
I've heard and read comments about the conceit of those who like to use the view finder and don't like to crop later. I even heard some strong opinions on this in an LL instructional video.
I feel it to be a very different experience and do prefer one over the other, and I must add, this is at this time in my life and experience...Things change.
I don't see any need for regarding one or the other as a correct or incorrect way or consider people in either group to be conceited or not conceited, and certainly don't exclude people in either group as artists.
I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?
Just curious, do you ever print an 8x10? 11x14? 3x5? 4x6?
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In the days of film, I always tried to crop within the camera. I came to really like the 35mm format and still do. But now after shooting nothing but digital for the past 4-5 years, I find the viewfinder as just another tool that I use to get close to what I may have envisioned. I still try to crop in the viewfinder, but I don't allow myself to be constrained by it. I often find that after I have had a chance to look at an image on my monitor, I find that there are things I may have missed, or even images that I didn't see when I was composing a shot, and then cropping almost becomes mandatory.
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I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?
Yes there is. As I remember the history.....back in the days when contact printing from large negatives was the norm (before modern papers that were fast enough to enlarge) there was a belief that in-camera seeing was superior. Paul Strand is a good example. He actually had his camera altered to give him negatives of what he considered the perfect rectangle and he never cropped when printing.
Beyond that I think I completely agree with Jonathan. Having shot transparency film commercially for some 28 years, I preferred to send perfectly composed FF 4x5 images to my magazine clients. That way I was much more likely to get my composition printed instead of the art director. Nothing has changed for me in digital.
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The Cropping Police are an insidious threat to Photograph Freedom. Just say no to Creeping Cropism. Or I'll report you to the Perspective Police.
Hah! The CP and PP are sissies compared to the Legion of Horizon Levelers.
- Fred Dawson
Member, L.H.L. Local 395
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One thing I've noticed, and it's a pretty general observation: people who crop regularly don't make as good pictures as those who treat cropping strictly as an emergency procedure. I think the reason is that a good photographer pre-visualizes a photograph by throwing a mental frame around a subject before he lifts the camera and throws the camera's frame around it. In other words, he makes a decision about the photograph and then carries out the decision by actually making the photograph. People who make a practice of cropping haven't really made a decision before they snap the shutter. The result is tentative, and often wishy-washy. The habitual cropper then tries to find an actual photograph in what he's shot, and what results often is strained and unconvincing.
On the other hand, there are times when you can't avoid cropping. Here's an example. Once I had the camera to my eye I had less than a second to get the shot. A guy walked into the frame from the left just as I tripped the shutter and I had to crop him out. That kind of thing doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Same thing's true of an incorrect horizon. If you're shooting fast it's not unusual to have to straighten the horizon. But these problems are just that -- problems. The cropping that results is truly an emergency procedure.
[attachment=13587:Fifth_Grade.jpg]
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One thing I've noticed, and it's a pretty general observation: people who crop regularly don't make as good pictures as those who treat cropping strictly as an emergency procedure.
Wow. Just wow.
You might find this link interesting. Not sure if you would consider these "emergency" crops or not.
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/04/27/spo...lide-show-book/ (http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/04/27/sports-illustrateds-slide-show-book/)
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If I have to crop then I didn't understand what I was shooting, a failure of seeing on my part as RSL pointed out. Anti-cropping is a good discipline because it forces me look at my subject carefully right from the start, and to think of the finished photograph right from the start. Shooting images in the hopes of finding something there in post is to be awash and incompetent in the visual skills.
An embrace of cropping encourages the funny concept that a photograph needs to have a single, tightly defined subject that is the focus of the entire image. I don't buy that at all, photographs can legitimately be about spaces, have multiple rambling subjects, and have other valid qualities that violate the tunnel visionary cropping-is-good paradigm.
I have two technical objections to cropping...
1. When it upsets (mostly left-right) perspective in pictures where perspective is important. In that case it's hoaky, don't do it. In particular badly cropped architecture looks awful.
2. The crop is extreme enough to noticeably degrade image quality.
As to the origins of the powerful cropping tradition, it must have it roots in high-school classrooms where it is an easy and engaging way to fill up one rotation of the minute hand. Young minds are so impressionable.
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For all the reasons cited, Full Frame is preferable, but of course there are some compositions and subjects that don't fit the standard 5:4, 4:3, or 3:2 aspect ratios. Cropping the extra is worthwhile in those cases. I really like the extra dollop freedom from a 2x2 MF frame. I can compose in the viewfinder, and then revamp to a H or V final image of any aspect ratio. Or I can leave it square. It's cool.
And if an art director recrops? Well, I get paid. And I can (silently, in my heart) call the AD an idiot. Sadly, that is not always so. It is possible for an AD to Get It Right.
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One thing I've noticed, and it's a pretty general observation: people who crop regularly don't make as good pictures as those who treat cropping strictly as an emergency procedure.
Exactly. I you haven't figured out a decent composition before you press the shutter release, the odds of finding one after the fact are significantly reduced. Minimal cropping to fit a particular aspect ratio or straighten a horizon that's off a degree or two is a necessary evil of post work. But if you're regularly hacking off more than 25% of your capture to try to salvage an image that wasn't composed properly in the first place, you're either sloppy or clueless, and it is negatively affecting your work.
I find it humorous that many practitioners of vigorous cropping are pixel-peepers who sneer at the notion of using a zoom lens because primes are 10% sharper, but see nothing wrong with cropping away 30-50% of the captured image because they couldn't get the framing quite right because they couldn't "foot zoom" quickly enough to capture the decisive moment with optimal composition in-camera. This is one of the most-overlooked advantages of a zoom over a prime; you can get the composition exactly right to minimize or eliminate the need for cropping, even in situations where "foot zooming" with a prime would be dangerous or impossible. This is especially true when shooting landscapes, where "foot zooming" might require walking several miles (during which time the light would change, of course) or hovering over the edge of a cliff; and when shooting events where circumstances require the photographer to be constrained to a small area or fixed location (weddings, sporting events, street photography where backing into a busy street would be unwise, etc.). Eschewing zooms in favor of primes in situations where that choice necessitates heavy cropping is being penny wise and pound foolish.
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It seems that there must be some history that I'm missing regarding the comments from those who like to compose with the view finder versus those who like the freedom of cropping later.
I've heard and read comments about the conceit of those who like to use the view finder and don't like to crop later. I even heard some strong opinions on this in an LL instructional video.
I feel it to be a very different experience and do prefer one over the other, and I must add, this is at this time in my life and experience...Things change.
I don't see any need for regarding one or the other as a correct or incorrect way or consider people in either group to be conceited or not conceited, and certainly don't exclude people in either group as artists.
I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?
Just my two cents-
I only crop when I have no alternative, as throwing away resolution seems unhelpful. Landscape photographs generally allow time for careful study of composition with the camera on a tripod. As a result I almost never crop a landscape photograph. If anything I'm more likely to stitch multiple frames together.
People photographs are another matter. This may simply reflect my lack of skill, but I find that the need to compose, focus, choose exposure and shoot on the fly hand-held with moving human subjects means I have a lot more photos with an errant tree branch or awkward frame edge needing rescue. Last night I took the obligatory photos of my son's prom night preparations. Invariably the only shot where everyone's eyes were open and expressions perfect had something awkward that was best cropped out. Sigh.
At least with high-megapixel capture it doesn't hurt quite so much, and I'm less likely to print people pix at 24x36" to count every pore and nose-hair.
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One thing I've noticed, and it's a pretty general observation: people who crop regularly don't make as good pictures as those who treat cropping strictly as an emergency procedure.
Those who crop regularly are probably taking a lot more photos of a bigger variety of subjects.
i.e. the inverse of the quoted statement is: "People who rarely crop are usually concentrating on getting that "one good shot" and miss many opportunities that other photographers are taking advantage of."
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What really bugs me though, about taking a lot of shots handheld, is not so much losing quality due to rotation/cropping issues, it's when the light or other circumstances are changing and I get several takes of a given scene, then back in the lab after tossing the less-than perfect images, I'm left with two - one has great light but isn't as sharp, and the other vice-versa. Noting a couple of scenes in the LLVJ videos, where the guys are shooting from tripods and "carefully composing", there is nonetheless mention of just missing the ideal frame due to changing light or other things. So carefully composing doesn't always get you what you want.
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Last night I took the obligatory photos of my son's prom night preparations. Invariably the only shot where everyone's eyes were open and expressions perfect had something awkward that was best cropped out. Sigh.
A local professional offers a service of cut & pasted "perfect" composite group photos of that type. Put the camera on a tripod, shoot a few dozen more or less random frames, fix it in post. Not exactly cropping, but of the same unconfident ilk.
Some pros are doing group photos where people come to the studio either singly or in small groups, then are shot against a green cyc to be later assembled into a larger group through the magic of PS. Makes it possible to do truly no-account tricks like having the whole group knees-bent in the middle of a jump. Grand Canyon background costs extra. Hey, it's a living.
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Those who crop regularly are probably taking a lot more photos of a bigger variety of subjects.
Perhaps. But I think cropping is mostly a symptom of having not learned to view composition through the viewfinder.
Newbies tend to look at parts of the the subject THROUGH the viewfinder, but do not look at the overall composition WITHIN the boundary of the viewfinder. Best practice is to frame the composition in the viewfinder looking first at the overall frame, then placing the central subject within that in a way that makes compositional sense. Compositional sense usually means that all the objects in the frame fall into some geometrical arrangement, and that stuff that does not relate to the subject is left out. But most importantly the photographer needs to "zoom out" his visual perception to include the boundary of the finder. Seems obvious, but it is usually elusive to the beginner. The most mysterious aspect of cropping is that anybody can crop reasonably well in post, but very few can do it in the viewfinder, under pressure.
And as for hand holding landscapes, that is the source of its own well deserved punishments! Good grief, hand holding landscapes, what's next. A person trying to shoot landscapes in light bright enough for hand holding misunderstand landscapes. Nature wants you to shoot landscapes at f8 at 1/4 second or slower in the last exquisite instants of magic hour, with a tripod. Everybody should know that, it does not require further explanation.
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Does anyone else recall that Hasselblad used to advertise their square format cameras specifically for cropping after the fact? -- Shoot square, then crop out a vertical for the cover, or a horizontal for the inside spread. Infinite flexibility. Here's a quote from a 1993 NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/05/style/camera-a-square-format-that-s-well-rounded.html):
"Ernst Wildi, technical director of Hasselblad in the United States, is a champion of the square format. He says 120 roll film gives a photographer more film area for higher-quality results than 35-millimeter and allows one to shift easily -- with a little cropping -- to making either vertical or horizontal pictures from the square format. He likes to point out that internationally known photographers like Mary Ellen Mark and Greg Heisler are Hasselblad users."
Not many beginners using 'Blads back then. I used the Bronica SQ-A, great camera.
I can understand -- sort of -- this bias against cropping if we're talking about landscape or architectural photography. Camera, tripod, locked down, with a careful and almost obsessive attention to every detail. And this is The Luminous Landscape, and many members shoot that sort of work.
But I find it laughable that so many responses here basically say the same thing: that anyone who crops is by definition a bad or beginning photographer. Tell that to old Ernst, why don't you....
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Those who crop regularly are probably taking a lot more photos of a bigger variety of subjects.
i.e. the inverse of the quoted statement is: "People who rarely crop are usually concentrating on getting that "one good shot" and miss many opportunities that other photographers are taking advantage of."
Dale, Those who are capable of framing what they actually want in their pictures are just as likely to shoot a series of shots as those who aren't quite sure what they want and keep banging away, hoping something worthwhile will turn up. That's exactly why, when he was evaluating the work of people who wanted to join Magnum, Cartier-Bresson always looked at contact sheets instead of individual prints. Contact sheets told him whether or not the photographer had a clear idea of what he was after. He and Magnum weren't interested in people who tried to make things work out from a fuzzy approach after the fact.
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Does anyone else recall that Hasselblad used to advertise their square format cameras specifically for cropping after the fact? -- Shoot square, then crop out a vertical for the cover, or a horizontal for the inside spread. Infinite flexibility. Here's a quote from a 1993 NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/05/style/camera-a-square-format-that-s-well-rounded.html):
"Ernst Wildi, technical director of Hasselblad in the United States, is a champion of the square format. He says 120 roll film gives a photographer more film area for higher-quality results than 35-millimeter and allows one to shift easily -- with a little cropping -- to making either vertical or horizontal pictures from the square format. He likes to point out that internationally known photographers like Mary Ellen Mark and Greg Heisler are Hasselblad users."
Not many beginners using 'Blads back then. I used the Bronica SQ-A, great camera.
I can understand -- sort of -- this bias against cropping if we're talking about landscape or architectural photography. Camera, tripod, locked down, with a careful and almost obsessive attention to every detail. And this is The Luminous Landscape, and many members shoot that sort of work.
But I find it laughable that so many responses here basically say the same thing: that anyone who crops is by definition a bad or beginning photographer. Tell that to old Ernst, why don't you....
Kind of makes the $30,000, 50 megapixel Hasselblad sound like a loser against the $8,000, 24 megapixel Nikon D3X if you're going to crop away half the Hasselblad's pixels to turn a square format into a rectangular one doesn't it? Wouldn't it be better to use the D3X? After all, it has a vertical release built in, and it's a heck of a lot easier to flip the camera to vertical than to hassle with post-processing cropping.
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Those who crop regularly are probably taking a lot more photos of a bigger variety of subjects.
i.e. the inverse of the quoted statement is: "People who rarely crop are usually concentrating on getting that "one good shot" and miss many opportunities that other photographers are taking advantage of."
B.S. Paying enough attention to what is going on around you so that you can frame the shot reasonably tight does not prevent you from taking advantage of a photographic opportunity. You are more likely to capture something interesting if you are sufficiently in tune with the action to frame a decent capture than if you merely point the camera, machine-gun the motor drive, and hope to crop something interesting out of the resulting mess. I've been known to shoot well in excess of 1,000 frames at a wedding or concert, but most of the time I crop only to change aspect ratio. It is a rare thing for something "interesting" to happen while I'm shooting without getting at least one reasonably good shot of it. If you are paying attention to what's going on around you, most of the time you can anticipate the "decisive moment", and the fraction of a second it takes to tweak the zoom setting and double-check focus does not impede you from nailing the peak of the action, whatever it is.
3 Principles Of Being An Excellent Photographer
1. Know your gear intimately, inside and out. Making the correct adjustment for any given situation should be instinctive. If shooting conditions change, you should know whether changing ISO, aperture, or shutter speed is the best option, and why. You should be familiar enough with your gear to make those changes immediately, so that you aren't missing an opportunity while attempting to figure out how to adjust a setting. The less time you spend futzing with your gear, the more time and attention you can devote to observing what is going on around you and capturing it well.
2. Know your subject just as intimately as your gear. Anticipating action is critical if you expect to photograph it well. Knowing what is going to happen before it happens give you time to prepare yourself and your equipment so that when the time comes, you are already there and all you have to do is press the shutter release. If you're shooting an event, go to the rehearsal if there is one. This will not only give you some excellent opportunities for candid shots, but it will also allow you to test various camera settings and shooting strategies, rehearse the sequence of events so you can find the best shooting location for each part of the ceremony, and iron out any conflicts between what you are doing and the expectations of the client, venue staff, and other participants. Learn as much as you can about the cultural significance of what is going on, (like the significance of changing shoes at a quinceanera); this will help you recognize and anticipate significant moments so you are ready to capture them when they happen. Learn as much as you can about the people around you; the presence of a particular person my be much more meaningful if you know that they are significant to what is going on. For example, if you are shooting a Black History Month event, knowing that that old guy sitting in the back is one of the Tuskeegee Airmen will probably affect how you shoot the event and enhance your client's satisfaction with your work, especially if you're an albino cracker like me.
3. Have a backup plan. You'll eventually need it. All your skill and creativity as a photographer mean exactly dick if something quits working and you have no backup plan. Don't even think about shooting a wedding or similar event where "do-overs" are not an option without one. Having backup equipment is expensive, but the pain in your wallet is much less than the pain you'll experience the first time you have an "oh s**t" moment in the middle of a wedding ceremony and haven't even shot the formals yet. You should be able to take any piece of gear you have, light it on fire, and still successfully complete the job.
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Does anyone else recall that Hasselblad used to advertise their square format cameras specifically for cropping after the fact?
You are being intentionally obtuse here. I specifically stated that cropping for the purpose of achieving a print aspect ratio different from that of the camera is not what I am arguing against. You can't change aspect ratio without cropping; in such cases, cropping is a necessary evil.
And yes, if someone shooting with a D3X shoots tightly framed and gets 20MP into the final print, and another photographer with the Hasselblad shoots sloppy and ends up cropping away all but 15MP of the capture, the print from the lightly cropped D3X capture might well be better than that from the heavily cropped 'Blad. And the 'Blad shooter would be a fool and a loser for doing so. While MFDBs tend to be more square than 3:2, there is no reason to crop away half of the original capture to get a 16x20" print.
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B.S. Paying enough attention to what is going on around you so that you can frame the shot reasonably tight does not prevent you from taking advantage of a photographic opportunity. You are more likely to capture something interesting if you are sufficiently in tune with the action to frame a decent capture than if you merely point the camera, machine-gun the motor drive, and....
No B.S. at all. A, I don't use a motor drive (signature says LX3 and ZS3), and B, you can't claim that framing shots carefully to minimize cropping can allow you to look around as much as someone who sees what they want but doesn't spend extra time framing carefully. That's just plain absurd. That's the same as saying the guy who's shooting from a tripod is as flexible as someone shooting freehand, to catch a bird flying by, or a deer jumping across the road. Just plain absurd.
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Dale, Those who are capable of framing what they actually want in their pictures are just as likely to shoot a series of shots as those who aren't quite sure what they want and keep banging away, hoping something worthwhile will turn up. That's exactly why, when he was evaluating the work of people who wanted to join Magnum, Cartier-Bresson always looked at contact sheets instead of individual prints. Contact sheets told him whether or not the photographer had a clear idea of what he was after. He and Magnum weren't interested in people who tried to make things work out from a fuzzy approach after the fact.
Straw man argument. I never claimed I don't look carefully and "bang away". I look just as intently as anyone, but I don't waste time getting the edges of the frame "exactly right". No need to - I just allow a little extra around what I want so I don't have to waste time. Your argument is like saying it's better to fold the napkins exactly precisely in half so they don't look unsightly, or make sure the labels on the cans in the cupboard are aligned exactly, in case someone thinks they look sloppy.
Now I'm not so dumb as to argue that there is NO reason to *ever* frame very precisely, but, certain habits have a way of turning into compulsions.
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I think a any print (AA called it the performance) should be solely judged on it's qualities as a picture, not on the means it was produced. So if this involved some cropping so be it.
I think a general statement like "people who crop don't know how to take good pictures" is as useful as saying "I never believe people who make general statements"
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I always try to fill the frame with a well composed image. In fact I have the opposite problem, where often I have not left enough room around the image I wanted to account for some overlap when matting. On the other hand, I was also taught, early in my film days, to take a pair of L-shaped pieces of cardboard and play with my negatives after the fact, to discover pictures I had not thought of or seen when taking the picture.
I do not consider post-shoot cropping to be "making up for a shooting deficiency" nor do I consider always filling the frame in the camera to be the proof of "the best photography." I do both, and I am sure many others do, as well. I do resent having to throw pixels away when I crop to correct what I should have seen in the first place, but I have many final images that came from suddenly seeing something in a small part of the image, even years later, that all of a sudden spoke to me.
My motto when it comes to cropping is to be flexible rather than arbitrary and rigid.
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Kind of makes the $30,000, 50 megapixel Hasselblad sound like a loser against the $8,000, 24 megapixel Nikon D3X if you're going to crop away half the Hasselblad's pixels to turn a square format into a rectangular one doesn't it? Wouldn't it be better to use the D3X? After all, it has a vertical release built in, and it's a heck of a lot easier to flip the camera to vertical than to hassle with post-processing cropping.
I find the proportions of the 50Mpx (8,175 * 6,132) Hasselblad very acceptable, but my preferred format is "one to the square root of 2", partly as it exactly fits A1 and other A-sized paper: the 35 mm 24:36 would be very nice for 24 * 36" paper.
Panoramic normally means wasting half or more of your res, or panning and stitching and distorting and cropping... and not getting much more res that you would have done if you had not bothered... but the logical solution is to use a sliding stitching back and nearly double your res without having to distort or crop.
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I just now opened the drawer with the old Kodachrome slide in it. That's where I got my attitude towards cropping. Frame it in camera, or weep!
That was back when photographers were real men. Moma don't take my Kodachrome away. They used to know me by name at the Kodak Hollywood Kodachrome plant, my shop was a short walk away. What a luxury...same day Kodachrome! Didn't need no stinkin' CF card!
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B, you can't claim that framing shots carefully to minimize cropping can allow you to look around as much as someone who sees what they want but doesn't spend extra time framing carefully. That's just plain absurd.
I do claim exactly that; framing tightly so that little or no cropping is necessary (other than the minimum needed to match the aspect ratio of a given print size) and consistently capturing action going on around you are not mutually exclusive. The key is to be intimately familiar with your equipment and what is going on around you so you can capture the moment quickly when it arises. When I decide to shoot something, I can bring the camera up, zoom in/out as needed to get the framing I want, focus, and take the shot in about two to three seconds. If I already have the camera up, even less time is necessary. But even shooting that quickly, most of the shots I take (>90%) are well-focused and composed, allowing me to choose the "keepers" on the basis of the artistic/creative merit of the selected images, rather than their technical merit. IOW, the choice is made on the basis of things like the subject's facial expression or most interesting moment of action, not which shot is the least misfocused. Obviously, if I am shooting a static subject or waiting for a particular moment, I reserve the right to take more than three seconds to capture the image. But in the great majority of situations, I can consistently get a technically and artistically competent capture requiring <10% cropping (excluding aspect ratio changes) in <3 seconds if I had to. It's not absurd, it's simply being competent.
If you can't consistently capture an arbitrary image in less than 3 seconds from the time you recognize the opportunity to shutter release, you need to practice with your equipment more. If necessary, practice with your equipment on a regular basis. 3 seconds may not sound like a lot of time, but with practice and responsive gear it is easily doable. If you are using a digicam that takes 3 seconds or more to lock focus, practice anyway; if you have to wait for the camera, it is even more important that you minimize the time the camera is waiting on you.
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I do claim exactly that; framing tightly so that little or no cropping is necessary (other than the minimum needed to match the aspect ratio of a given print size) and consistently capturing action going on around you are not mutually exclusive. The key is to be intimately familiar with your equipment and what is going on around you so you can capture the moment quickly when it arises. When I decide to shoot something, I can bring the camera up, zoom in/out as needed to get the framing I want, focus, and take the shot in about two to three seconds. If I already have the camera up, even less time is necessary. But even shooting that quickly, most of the shots I take (>90%) are well-focused and composed, allowing me to choose the "keepers" on the basis of the artistic/creative merit of the selected images, rather than their technical merit. IOW, the choice is made on the basis of things like the subject's facial expression or most interesting moment of action, not which shot is the least misfocused. Obviously, if I am shooting a static subject or waiting for a particular moment, I reserve the right to take more than three seconds to capture the image. But in the great majority of situations, I can consistently get a technically and artistically competent capture requiring <10% cropping (excluding aspect ratio changes) in <3 seconds if I had to. It's not absurd, it's simply being competent.
If you can't consistently capture an arbitrary image in less than 3 seconds from the time you recognize the opportunity to shutter release, you need to practice with your equipment more. If necessary, practice with your equipment on a regular basis. 3 seconds may not sound like a lot of time, but with practice and responsive gear it is easily doable. If you are using a digicam that takes 3 seconds or more to lock focus, practice anyway; if you have to wait for the camera, it is even more important that you minimize the time the camera is waiting on you.
I don't have any disagreement with this. Looks like your initial disagreement (the 'BS' comment) was based on your misunderstanding.
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Cropping is not desirable as a rule. It will reduce image's resolution and also considerations about the pre-visualization of the scene and the good photographer (already commented in the thread) can be made against cropping.
But cropping can also benefit us or even be necessary under some circumstances, I don't see any problem in cropping in a clever way.
In fact sometimes not-cropping can lead to worse consequences than cropping:
- If you are quick shooting over a scene, allowing some extra room around the subject assuming some cropping can prevent us from loosing important information of the scene.
- If you are using a prime lens, to have the perfect field of view can mean have an undesired point of view. Cropping allows to have both FOV and perspective.
- If you are not generating final images, but images that will be used by third parties (a graphic designer for instance), they will be pleased that you allow some extra room around each subject to crop according to the final print format.
If you have a good lens, and a high resolution camera (>20Mpx), there is no reason at all to care about the drawbacks of cropping.
BR
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Straw man argument. I never claimed I don't look carefully and "bang away".
Actually, that's exactly what you said, and I quote: "I use small cameras, but still crop. Cropping is very valuable because I can spend much more time in the field looking for possible images and capturing "around" them a dozen different ways..."
I look just as intently as anyone, but I don't waste time getting the edges of the frame "exactly right". No need to - I just allow a little extra around what I want so I don't have to waste time.
When you see and understand what you want from a scene you don't "waste time" getting the edges of the frame exactly right. You do that intuitively. I understand that people who haven't practiced their art sufficiently to be able to do that intuitively may have to resort to winging it, and hope something worthwhile will show up in post-processing, but it's always worth your time to work on that deficiency until you can frame your pictures correctly.
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I do claim exactly that; framing tightly so that little or no cropping is necessary (other than the minimum needed to match the aspect ratio of a given print size) and consistently capturing action going on around you are not mutually exclusive. The key is to be intimately familiar with your equipment and what is going on around you so you can capture the moment quickly when it arises. When I decide to shoot something, I can bring the camera up, zoom in/out as needed to get the framing I want, focus, and take the shot in about two to three seconds. If I already have the camera up, even less time is necessary. But even shooting that quickly, most of the shots I take (>90%) are well-focused and composed, allowing me to choose the "keepers" on the basis of the artistic/creative merit of the selected images, rather than their technical merit. IOW, the choice is made on the basis of things like the subject's facial expression or most interesting moment of action, not which shot is the least misfocused. Obviously, if I am shooting a static subject or waiting for a particular moment, I reserve the right to take more than three seconds to capture the image. But in the great majority of situations, I can consistently get a technically and artistically competent capture requiring <10% cropping (excluding aspect ratio changes) in <3 seconds if I had to. It's not absurd, it's simply being competent.
If you can't consistently capture an arbitrary image in less than 3 seconds from the time you recognize the opportunity to shutter release, you need to practice with your equipment more. If necessary, practice with your equipment on a regular basis. 3 seconds may not sound like a lot of time, but with practice and responsive gear it is easily doable. If you are using a digicam that takes 3 seconds or more to lock focus, practice anyway; if you have to wait for the camera, it is even more important that you minimize the time the camera is waiting on you.
Exactly! Or, as HCB said, "Photographing is nothing. Looking is everything."
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Sorry -- double post.
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I almost always agree with Jonathan, but in this case I think he's wrong. (But not utterly wrong.) There are a number of assumptions built into what he is saying, and they are (1) resolution is more important than composition. I think is almost never the case. (2) That good composition on any subject can be forced into whatever frame you're carrying that day -- square in some cases, 2x3 in others, 4x5 or 6x7 in others, and all you have to do is maneuver around a little. I think that is almost never the case. (3) That when you crop, you throw away a huge proportion of the pixels. I think that's almost never the case, unless you're cropping from square to something else (a big problem with the square format) or you're too lazy to switch your camera orientation. (4) He's also implicitly suggesting that nature (or at least the external world) should dictate to the photographer. I think most artists go the other way around - they take from the world what *they* wish, and that usually involves cropping. The real world doesn't necessarily come in 2:3 bites. Sometimes times it's necessary to take a 1:5 photo with your 2:3 frame.
...and Jonathan concedes this when he says it's sometimes "necessary" to make a few trims. Well, yes. Isn't that what we're talking about? We really weren't talking about unnecessary or frivolous trims. We're talking about trims that help the photo more than the extra resolution will help it.
He's not utterly wrong because the idea of cropping in camera, as a goal (but not a requirement) will get you the most usable pixels; when you see your composition, you fit as much of it as you can. Then you plan for a crop. You PLAN for a crop because that is the way you'll get the most final pixels.
And, I think most people know all of this. The full-frame idea is simply a worthwhile consideration that some people have hardened into a rule; but a foolish one, IMHO. It's as if Rembrandt were required to paint only on sizes and shapes dictated by some clerk in the canvas factory.
JC
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I don't have any disagreement with this. Looks like your initial disagreement (the 'BS' comment) was based on your misunderstanding.
So was it your evil twin or an alternate personality that wrote these?
i.e. the inverse of the quoted statement is: "People who rarely crop are usually concentrating on getting that "one good shot" and miss many opportunities that other photographers are taking advantage of."
B, you can't claim that framing shots carefully to minimize cropping can allow you to look around as much as someone who sees what they want but doesn't spend extra time framing carefully. That's just plain absurd.
There is no misunderstanding here; you are clearly stating that you believe that photographers who compose in-camera and frame so that little or no cropping is needed later miss more shooting opportunities than those who shoot "loose" and crop heavily later. I disagree strongly with that notion, for the reasons detailed in my previous posts.
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Actually, that's exactly what you said, and I quote: "I use small cameras, but still crop. Cropping is very valuable because I can spend much more time in the field looking for possible images and capturing "around" them a dozen different ways..."
When you see and understand what you want from a scene you don't "waste time" getting the edges of the frame exactly right. You do that intuitively. I understand that people who haven't practiced their art sufficiently to be able to do that intuitively may have to resort to winging it, and hope something worthwhile will show up in post-processing, but it's always worth your time to work on that deficiency until you can frame your pictures correctly.
In legal situations, this is called being argumentative. You understand my intent clearly yet continue to beat a dead horse.
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So was it your evil twin or an alternate personality that wrote these?
There is no misunderstanding here; you are clearly stating that you believe that photographers who compose in-camera and frame so that little or no cropping is needed later miss more shooting opportunities than those who shoot "loose" and crop heavily later. I disagree strongly with that notion, for the reasons detailed in my previous posts.
Again, argumentative. You either have an obsession with "getting it perfect" or an obsession with winning an argument (of some kind). The simple answer is, you line up a good shot the best you can based (in my case) on 40 years of shooting experience, and then fix the imperfections in the lab. The details aren't so important to know here - nearly every lurker here knows them. I make process mfg. software for customers who lose 95 percent of their raw material on the way to making a finished good, and other customers who lose only 5 percent. Is one more right than the other? It's absurd to say so without knowing what they're making (usually secret) and how much they're selling it for. If I crop a lot because it's serving my artistic vision, who are you to say it's wrong? If you have a technical point, make it, but you can't make such final judgements as you're trying to, because you simply don't know enough.
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Hi,
My view on cropping is that there no need to be religious about it. Some cropping is necessary.
1) The aspect ratio doesn't fit the media
2) The subject requires some kind of extreme aspect ratio. What I call semi panoramics are a good example of that. I often shoot more frame and stitch rather than crop in order to preserve pixels.
My suggestion is essentially: Compose in the viewfinder. Crop if cropping improves the picture. Learn from misstakes.
A final note: 3:2 or 4:3 are not optimal aspect ratios! Each subject may need it's own aspect ratio. With the arrival of HD 16:9 is a new aspect ratio we need to learn to live with.
Best regards
Erik
It seems that there must be some history that I'm missing regarding the comments from those who like to compose with the view finder versus those who like the freedom of cropping later.
I've heard and read comments about the conceit of those who like to use the view finder and don't like to crop later. I even heard some strong opinions on this in an LL instructional video.
I feel it to be a very different experience and do prefer one over the other, and I must add, this is at this time in my life and experience...Things change.
I don't see any need for regarding one or the other as a correct or incorrect way or consider people in either group to be conceited or not conceited, and certainly don't exclude people in either group as artists.
I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?
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....you believe that photographers who compose in-camera and frame so that little or no cropping is needed later miss more shooting opportunities than those who shoot "loose" and crop heavily later....
In the interest of being informative rather than merely rhetorical, I crop an average of 5 to 8 percent linearly on landscapes or other large scenes, and 20 to 40 percent linearly on photos of small birds at distance. If that constitutes heavy cropping, I plead 100 percent guilty.
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I like 1:1.
Hi,
My view on cropping is that there no need to be religious about it. Some cropping is necessary.
1) The aspect ratio doesn't fit the media
2) The subject requires some kind of extreme aspect ratio. What I call semi panoramics are a good example of that. I often shoot more frame and stitch rather than crop in order to preserve pixels.
My suggestion is essentially: Compose in the viewfinder. Crop if cropping improves the picture. Learn from misstakes.
A final note: 3:2 or 4:3 are not optimal aspect ratios! Each subject may need it's own aspect ratio. With the arrival of HD 16:9 is a new aspect ratio we need to learn to live with.
Best regards
Erik
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I almost always agree with Jonathan, but in this case I think he's wrong. (But not utterly wrong.) There are a number of assumptions built into what he is saying, and they are (1) resolution is more important than composition. I think is almost never the case. (2) That good composition on any subject can be forced into whatever frame you're carrying that day -- square in some cases, 2x3 in others, 4x5 or 6x7 in others, and all you have to do is maneuver around a little. I think that is almost never the case. (3) That when you crop, you throw away a huge proportion of the pixels. I think that's almost never the case, unless you're cropping from square to something else (a big problem with the square format) or you're too lazy to switch your camera orientation. (4) He's also implicitly suggesting that nature (or at least the external world) should dictate to the photographer. I think most artists go the other way around - they take from the world what *they* wish, and that usually involves cropping. The real world doesn't necessarily come in 2:3 bites. Sometimes times it's necessary to take a 1:5 photo with your 2:3 frame.
Go back and re-read what I wrote. I specifically exempted cropping-for-the-purpose-of-changing-aspect-ratio from my criticism of cropping in general, more than once. A lot of the stuff I shoot ends up getting cropped from the 2:3 aspect ratio of my cameras to a 4:5 aspect ratio. If you look at the images I've posted here, on my web site, and elsewhere, probably half are 4:5. But when I crop a 1Ds (4064x2704) image to 4:5, I almost always do so by trimming the ends only, not the sides, so that the cropped image is 3380x2704. Cropping from 4064x2704 to 3380x2704 is a necessary evil required to crop from 2:3 to 4:5. But cropping further than that (say down to 2500x2000) is an unnecessary evil, and something to be avoided whenever possible.
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Again, argumentative. You either have an obsession with "getting it perfect" or an obsession with winning an argument (of some kind).
You were agreeing with statements I made disagreeing with statements you made. I was simply pointing out the obvious inconsistency in what you wrote. And instead of clarifying your position, you chose to go ad hominem, calling me "argumentative". What do you actually believe?
A. Cropping is something that should be kept to a minimum by composing as closely to the final print as the aspect ratio of the camera allows.
or
B. Doing so causes so many missed shooting opportunities that shooting loosely and cropping later is the preferable method.
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...framing tightly so that little or no cropping is necessary (other than the minimum needed to match the aspect ratio of a given print size)
It is good to make good use of your pixel res, and also not to waste too much paper... The client or the format of a magazine or calender might dictate the proportions, but if you produce prints for sale, "print size" should not be a restriction - you can crop to the final size and shape with a guillotine, and custom frame any size or shape.
I would not want to be stuck with standard print sizes, (or aspect ratios) so I use roll paper - any ratio or size I like up to 24" * 10.5m (until I get the 60" printer).
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You were agreeing with statements I made disagreeing with statements you made.
Um, no. I agreed only with a specific statement that made general sense, but not with statements that dictate your terms of cropping. Based on your many comments, I don't see art getting in the way of your quest for precision any time soon. And BTW, in case you missed my previous post, those are real numbers as opposed to vague assertions.
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Based on your many comments, I don't see art getting in the way of your quest for precision any time soon.
You obviously haven't looked at any of my work then...
(http://www.visual-vacations.com/images/2009/2009-05-07_0030.jpg)
Not cropped except to convert to 4:5 aspect ratio.
And post #41 appears to have been posted while I was still writing my previous post. You didn't answer the question I asked in it.
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...and Jonathan concedes this when he says it's sometimes "necessary" to make a few trims. Well, yes. Isn't that what we're talking about? We really weren't talking about unnecessary or frivolous trims. We're talking about trims that help the photo more than the extra resolution will help it.
JC
John,
I think we all agree that there are times when you need to crop. The argument seems to be over whether or not the photographer ought to compose his photograph in the camera’s viewfinder or simply snap something that includes what he thinks he wants and then figure out the composition in post-processing. Sort of what we used to suggest to each other when I was flying fighters in Korea: “Shoot ‘em down and sort ‘em out on the ground.”
I keep quoting Henri Cartier-Bresson because the geometry of his compositions was exceptionally good – perhaps the best I’ve seen, and because he was the most articulate photographer I’ve encountered: someone who could explain how he worked.
HCB always composed on the camera, and even insisted that his photographs be printed with the dark border of the unexposed part of the film included. On the other hand, his most famous photograph “Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare,” the picture of the guy jumping into the puddle, always (incorrectly) used to illustrate “the decisive moment,” was cropped. Like the picture of the three fifth-graders I posted above, he had less than a second to get the shot and there was a wall off to the left that he couldn’t avoid including. Another was the very moving picture of the woman kissing the bishop’s ring. He couldn’t get close enough to the scene, was standing behind a row of people and had to lift the camera up and shoot down, then crop later. But all of his crops were emergency procedures, not standard practice.
Here are some quotes from the Aperture book, The Mind’s Eye, a collection of Cartier-Bresson’s writings:
“To take photographs means to recognize – simultaneously and within a fraction of a second – both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning.”
“One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material…”
“If you start cutting or cropping a good photograph, it means death to the geometrically correct interplay of proportions. Besides, it very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition under the darkroom’s enlarger; the integrity of vision is no longer there.”
I think this is what this discussion is all about. In my 79 years I’ve seen a lot of photographs and I’ll say it again: People who crop regularly don’t make as good pictures as those who treat cropping strictly as an emergency procedure.
I agree with most of Jonathan’s points – except the idea of shooting at a 4 x 5 ratio with a 2 x 3 camera. If I wanted 4 x 5 I’d get a camera that’ll shoot 4 x 5. I could set my D3 up that way, but I don’t because I happen to like the 2 x 3 format.
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Okay, after 3 pages of posts on cropping does any one have an answer for the OP?
For the record the question was ...
"I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?"
I'll suggest that there is no particular history. It is just the standard "someone is wrong on the internet" thread path. And cropping sits in technique and workflow so there is plenty to be "wrong" about.
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You obviously haven't looked at any of my work then...
Not cropped except to convert to 4:5 aspect ratio.
And post #41 appears to have been posted while I was still writing my previous post. You didn't answer the question I asked in it.
Congratulations on making a good image without cropping. I just ordered a Pana G1 to complement my ZS3. With the much larger sensor, you'll be delighted to know that when I crop the bird photos 40 percent, I'll be cropping from a much higher quality image. I do try my best, Jon, but no matter how skilled I become in the next year or so (ignoring the previous 40), I still frequently see ways to make a better image by cropping the near-perfect scene I grab in the field. Just my personal compulsion, I guess.
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The argument seems to be over whether or not the photographer ought to compose his photograph in the camera’s viewfinder......
Funny irony here - I've been snapping without a viewfinder for awhile, and I know the screen isn't a perfect view of the actual capture. I don't know if the EVF of the Pana G1 I just ordered is 100% or not, but that may help matters. I've preferred EVF's on the lowly Pana FZ50 and Nikon 8800 over most of the DSLR viewfinders I've seen, so I don't know what viewfinders you and Jon are using. Maybe yours are a lot better than typical DSLR viewfinders.
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Funny irony here - I've been snapping without a viewfinder for awhile, and I know the screen isn't a perfect view of the actual capture. I don't know if the EVF of the Pana G1 I just ordered is 100% or not, but that may help matters. I've preferred EVF's on the lowly Pana FZ50 and Nikon 8800 over most of the DSLR viewfinders I've seen, so I don't know what viewfinders you and Jon are using. Maybe yours are a lot better than typical DSLR viewfinders.
Dale, As I said in my last post, I'm using the Nikon D3. Its viewfinder is 100%. Same with my D2X, which I still use to some extent. My Epson R-D1 is about 85% and I have to compensate for that.
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I've preferred EVF's on the lowly Pana FZ50 and Nikon 8800 over most of the DSLR viewfinders I've seen, so I don't know what viewfinders you and Jon are using. Maybe yours are a lot better than typical DSLR viewfinders.
Canon 1Ds and 1D-II. Their viewfinders are better than what you'll find in most SLRs, digital or otherwise.
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Jonathan- congrats on the baby, do you mind if I crop your photo and repost it?
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Jonathan- congrats on the baby, do you mind if I crop your photo and repost it?
Feel free, as long as you don't try to claim the image itself as your work.
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Okay, after 3 pages of posts on cropping does any one have an answer for the OP?
For the record the question was ...
"I'm just curious, is there some history to these strong opinions that I'm not aware of?"
I'll suggest that there is no particular history. It is just the standard "someone is wrong on the internet" thread path. And cropping sits in technique and workflow so there is plenty to be "wrong" about.
On January 7, 1839, L. J. M. Daguerre announced his method for capturing an image which later became known as photography. The pictures produced by the Daguerre method were called Daguerreotypes in his honor. Unfortunately, Daguerre had used a metal plate measuring 8-1/2 x 6-1/2 inches which would not fit into a standard 5 x 7 inch picture frame and he had to apply tin snips to fit the plate into the frame. This is the first known instance of cropping and Daguerre was severely criticized by the French press. Later, the 8-1/2 x 6-1/2 inch plate became known as the “whole plate” size and strict laws were instituted that allowed only “half plate”, “quarter plate”, etc. sizes. Illegal sizes, widely used on the black market, were decried as “tintypes” and were considered inferior to the original “whole plate” Daguerreotypes.
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Feel free, as long as you don't try to claim the image itself as your work.
Thanks- after re-reading this thread I have to agree that this topic has run it's course.
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Can someone refresh my memory? Who was it who said, "I never saw a photograph that could not be improved with a bit of cropping", or something to that effect?
The title of this thread seems rather odd to me. The religion of cropping?? What on earth gives anyone the idea that cropping has anything to do with religion?
A better title would be, "History of the Irreligious Concept of Cropping". There should be nothing religious about cropping. It should be possible to present a number of different crops of the same image, each expressing a slightly different perspective or idea.
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Picking up on a tidbit here...
Perhaps. But I think cropping is mostly a symptom of having not learned to view composition through the viewfinder.
Newbies tend to look at parts of the the subject THROUGH the viewfinder, but do not look at the overall composition WITHIN the boundary of the viewfinder.
....
A few years ago I noticed a distinct improvement in the composition of shots made by friends who were casual shooters when they switched from film to digital cameras. Mostly it seemed that they were doing a better job of filling the frame.
All had purchased compact digitals without optical viewfinders and were using the rear screen for shooting rather than the optical viewfinder that their film cameras provided.
I decided that they were treating the screen as if it was a print that they were holding in their hands rather than looking at their subject through the viewfinder.
A camera LCD might be a good way to teach newbies composition. (I certainly think using a digital set to B&W helps to start seeing shapes and textures by taking colors out of the shot before processing.)
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Can someone refresh my memory? Who was it who said, "I never saw a photograph that could not be improved with a bit of cropping", or something to that effect?
Don't know, don't care, as it's a patently absurd statement. If you follow it to its logical confusion, every photograph would end up being cropped away to nothing. If the composition is gotten right in-camera, cropping will detract from the composition, not improve it.
A camera LCD might be a good way to teach newbies composition. (I certainly think using a digital set to B&W helps to start seeing shapes and textures by taking colors out of the shot before processing.)
LCD viewfinders have their drawbacks (low resolution, lag, etc.), but they are better than some of the tiny, dark optical viewfinders found on some cameras. I think it would be cool to make a tethered shooting app that displays the live view feed from the camera inside an on-screen frame+mat with a user-defined aspect ratio (2:3, 4:5, 5:7, 11:17, etc) to pre-visualize what the captured image might look like matted and framed...
[attachment=13639:2003_08_...6_framed.jpg]
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If you follow it to its logical confusion, every photograph would end up being cropped away to nothing. If the composition is gotten right in-camera, cropping will detract from the composition, not improve it.
I think it would be cool to make a tethered shooting app that displays the live view feed from the camera.....
To preclude cropping down to nothing, we should always preserve our originals, and ideally, use good workflow software. Composition is only one element of the process, and *any* change in other factors such as color, contrast, etc. may in fact call for a different crop. Which is why tethered shooting has its limits - it's a technical advantage, but still doesn't guarantee the final crop, since you can't usually get a fully-calibrated view in the field.
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To preclude cropping down to nothing, we should always preserve our originals, and ideally, use good workflow software.
Ummmm, no. You avoid cropping down to nothing by ignoring the foolish notion that all images can be improved by cropping. At some point, cropping is going to detract from the composition of the image rather than improve it. If the image was properly composed in-camera, then any cropping after the fact is going to be detrimental.
Composition is only one element of the process, and *any* change in other factors such as color, contrast, etc. may in fact call for a different crop.
Can you provide an example of this? I've never felt the need to change the composition based on a tweak to contrast or color. Many people think just the opposite; that converting the image to B&W removes the distraction of color and aids focusing solely on the composition, so you can frame the image better in-camera and crop less in post.
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In discussing the "history of cropping" we need to keep in mind that the tools have changed enormously since Daguerre (to name but one of the early photographers).
Today we are not limited to printing what is on the plate, or the film. We can not only crop, we can also distort, skew, resize, reformat, clone, stretch and much more, thanks to CS4 and other imaging software.
Personally, I use all of the above possibilities in my work and more. My goal is to create on paper the image I see in my mind. I give myself this freedom and I know that my audience embraces my approach. It has revolutionized my approach to photography. I have no intent and I make no claim of doing "pure" photography, if there is such a thing.
How much freedom you give yourself, what you consider acceptable and inacceptable, are decisions each of us has to make.
There is no right and wrong. There are simply different ways of approaching photography. Certainly, you will find opposition, regardless of what decisions you take.
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Don't know, don't care, as it's a patently absurd statement. If you follow it to its logical confusion, every photograph would end up being cropped away to nothing. If the composition is gotten right in-camera, cropping will detract from the composition, not improve it.
I see. You actually thought that whoever it was who made that statement, or something along those lines, was actually trying to say that whenever he saw one of his own photographs, he cropped it again, and again the next day, and the next week and each time he saw it he cropped it yet again until it was reduced to nothing. That really would be absurd.
But how could you think that that is what was meant, Jonathan?
Rather, I assumed that what the photographer meant, whoever it was who made that comment, was that he had a very individualistic idea of cropping that was at least slightly different from everyone else's. I assumed that such a remark would apply to other peoples' images and that he (or she) would always feel that other people's images required at least a small degree of cropping, even if it meant shaving off only a couple of millimetres from one side.
Don't you think that's a more sensible interpretation?
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Yes, I think this thread's about run its course, but I'm going to add one more post.
I think that HCB is correct when he states that framing a picture has to be intuitive. In street photography that's certainly true. You simply don't have time to set everything up according to the "rules" of composition. You have to see the picture in its entirety and react to it without thinking. It's less obvious that something like landscape photography requires the same kind of intuitive reaction, but one thing I've observed in 56 years of active photography is that if you're shooting landscape, or, say, an abandoned farmhouse, even though you may make a series of exposures, the first one more often than not turns out to be the best picture. That's because what you shot first was what you saw that made you stop to shoot the picture.
For most people it takes years of experience to get to the point where photographic composition is intuitive. It takes a lot of shooting and cussing when, as HCB says in another context, you look at your results and see where you went wrong. I suspect there are naturals out there who get it right from the very beginning, but I've never met one.
The other thing it takes is a thorough familiarity with the work of the masters: people like Eugene Atget, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Andre Kertesz, Paul Strand, Gene Smith, Robert Doisneau, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Chim, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Helen Levitt, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robert Frank, Steve McCurry, and others I've left out of this list. When you find a master whose work moves you, you'll probably try to copy that work. In the beginning there's nothing wrong with that. That's how we learn -- same way some of the great painters learned by copying the masters who went before them. Eventually, though, you'll begin to find your own style. That's when it all comes together and photographing becomes one of life's most satisfying experiences.
In the long run, winging it just doesn't get the job done. You need to work at it and learn to compose in your viewfinder. That's where the picture either comes together or doesn't come together. Post-processing can't salvage a badly composed photograph.
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I assumed that what the photographer meant, whoever it was who made that comment, was that he had a very individualistic idea of cropping that was at least slightly different from everyone else's. I assumed that such a remark would apply to other peoples' images and that he (or she) would always feel that other people's images required at least a small degree of cropping, even if it meant shaving off only a couple of millimetres from one side.
In other words, "My photos never need cropping, but everybody else's does." Yes, Ray, I think I've met a couple of photographers who think that way.
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In other words, "My photos never need cropping, but everybody else's does." Yes, Ray, I think I've met a couple of photographers who think that way.
No, Eric. Why would you think that that is what he meant? What is more likely is that the famous photographer who made that remark was simply saying that he has a very individualistic and very precise concept of what constitutes the best cropping, and that such cropping rarely lends itself exactly to a predetermined aspect ratio of 3:2 or 4:3 etc., but is determinedand soley by the composition. I imagine that he (or she) would always crop his own images straight out of the camera, to some degree (unlike HCB), even if such images often required just a few millimetres shaved of one or two sides.
In fact the idea that a composition in general, with the almost infinite variability that compositions can have, should conform to the precise aspect ratio of the camera used, seems a very unlikely event, if one is a perfectionist.
I'll add that quite often when I see one of HCB's photos, for example, I sometimes think, 'Well, I'd have cropped off that bit over there. It seems an unnecessary distraction", or something like that.
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You avoid cropping down to nothing by ignoring the foolish notion that all images can be improved by cropping.
At some point, cropping is going to detract from the composition of the image rather than improve it.
If the image was properly composed in-camera, then any cropping after the fact is going to be detrimental.
I've never felt the need to change the composition based on a tweak to contrast or color.
First statement true. Not all images can be improved by cropping.
Second statement true (at some point, wherever that is.)
Third statement could be true, if the perfect composition can be made at capture time.
Fourth statement is more difficult due to the definition of "tweak", and where your personal threshold is for when a change crosses the line between "this part of the image looks OK" and "now that I've enhanced the color, that green area there is bothering me, and I can crop part of it and be happier with the result."
Actually, a crop in some (or most?) cases makes a different image. Save the crop and the original and now you have two images, not just one. And you got this without having to take the time to perfectly compose the second instance. That seems like a bargain to me.
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I see. You actually thought that whoever it was who made that statement, or something along those lines, was actually trying to say that whenever he saw one of his own photographs, he cropped it again, and again the next day, and the next week and each time he saw it he cropped it yet again until it was reduced to nothing. That really would be absurd.
But how could you think that that is what was meant, Jonathan?
Because that is exactly what he said, or more precisely, exactly what you say he said.*** If every image can benefit from cropping, then infinite cropping loop that crops the image down to nothing is exactly what you get. It's a ridiculous scenario, and an equally ridiculous statement, but it is the inevitable conclusion that must be drawn if you accept the validity of the premise that every image can benefit from cropping. If every image can benefit from cropping, then it is immaterial whether or not the image has already been cropped--it can still benefit from more cropping.
OTOH, if you start from the premise that every image has an optimal composition, then whenever that composition is achieved in-camera at shutter release, no cropping in post is necessary or desirable. Ergo, not all images will benefit from cropping. And photographers who consistently get the composition right at shutter release (within the constraints of the aspect ratio of the camera) and avoid the need for cropping after the fact are more skilled than those who consistently fail to achieve optimal composition at shutter release and have to crop heavily afterwards.
***I did a Google search on the alleged quote, and didn't find evidence indicating any notable photographer ever said such a thing.
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Actually, a crop in some (or most?) cases makes a different image. Save the crop and the original and now you have two images, not just one. And you got this without having to take the time to perfectly compose the second instance. That seems like a bargain to me.
It isn't. If a subject is worth experimenting with different compositions, simply shoot a series of frames with variations in the composition. Then you will have a full-resolution version of whatever variation you end up selecting, and you can vary perspective, focus placement, exposure, etc. as as well--something you can't do by cropping.
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Let me say in different words what I said before, I think the quality of any picture should only be judged on the final (printed or posted) result and the process used to achieve it is not important in my mind. So if that process involves cropping that's perfectly OK. Obviously when resolution defects become visible too much cropping has taken place, but that's again judging by presentation medium only and no value judgement on the process.
For me all the rest of the arguments in this thread are just myth, if people want to live by these process rules that's fine by me, but putting a value assessment on the end-product because of following these 'self inflicted/invented' rules or not is absurd.
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Let me say in different words what I said before, I think the quality of any picture should only be judged on the final (printed or posted) result and the process used to achieve it is not important in my mind.
Pieter, You're absolutely right. But the burden of the argument on this thread is that photographs composed on the camera are almost always better than photographs made by shooting in the general direction of the subject and then sorting out the composition or trying to find the actual photograph in post-processing. That's not always true, but it's awfully close to always true.
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But the burden of the argument on this thread is that photographs composed on the camera are almost always better than photographs made by shooting in the general direction of the subject and then sorting out the composition or trying to find the actual photograph in post-processing. That's not always true, but it's awfully close to always true.
I would think it is always true that any photographer does his best to compose the shot on the camera at the time of shooting. The rest is either fine-tuning or second thoughts.
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It isn't. If a subject is worth experimenting with different compositions, simply shoot a series of frames with variations in the composition. Then you will have a full-resolution version of whatever variation you end up selecting, and you can vary perspective, focus placement, exposure, etc. as as well--something you can't do by cropping.
Foresight is better than hindsight? Sure. But are you implying that hindsight should be disregarded? Or are you saying that hindsight is merely the fallback of the lazy and incompetent? A lot hinges on that word *merely*.
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Foresight is better than hindsight? Sure. But are you implying that hindsight should be disregarded? Or are you saying that hindsight is merely the fallback of the lazy and incompetent? A lot hinges on that word *merely*.
I think of cropping as being like underexposure. If you accidentally underexpose a shot by 2 stops, you can usually make something fairly decent out of it in the RAW converter. But that doesn't mean that one should habitually underexpose your images by 2 stops; if you want the best results, you need to get exposure right in-camera. Cropping is the same; it's a fallback option if you don't get it right in-camera, but it's always better to try to get things right in-camera.
No one is perfect; I've had to crop and make the best of underexposed RAWs more than once. But when I'm shooting, I always strive to get the best possible focus, exposure, and composition in-camera, and generally succeed. But failure to do so is not something to celebrate as a Good Thing.
If you are exercising hindsight on the majority of your images, then your foresight is obviously lacking.
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But failure to do so is not something to celebrate as a Good Thing.
I think we're getting somewhere.
If we could say it's not always (or by definition) a bad thing either we've achieved a mutual understanding.
Also I think there is a difference with exposure. There's no technical reason to get the exposure wrong. The wrong crop can also be a function of what lenses you have with you and what freedom you have to go to the place you would ideally like to take the shot from, so sometimes there are not enough degrees of freedom.
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I think we're getting somewhere.
If we could say it's not always (or by definition) a bad thing either we've achieved a mutual understanding.
No, it's always a bad thing. Getting the framing right in-camera is always preferable to cropping after the fact. But sometimes it's your only option, since nobody shoots perfectly 100% of the time, and no camera's aspect ratio exactly matches the best composition for every photo.
Also I think there is a difference with exposure. There's no technical reason to get the exposure wrong.
In a studio setting, perhaps. But try shooting a concert where the ambient light level is changing by a couple of stops every few seconds. Aperture priority is generally your best bet, but because the lighting is constantly changing, you can't dial in a constant exposure compensation. The optimal EC setting for when the lead singer is in the spotlight and everyone else is in the dark is quite different than what's appropriate when everyone is lit. And every time you change composition, you need to re-tweak EC. And you can't use flash, because most bands (the more well-known ones, anyway) won't allow flash during a live show. Do you really think you're going to nail exposure perfectly 100% of the time?
But you missed my point, which is this: when you underexpose, you can compensate by making the appropriate adjustments in the RAW converter, but underexposing always has a negative effect on the final print. In the same way, if you fail to compose properly, you can compensate by cropping, but the result of doing so is always inferior to shooting with the best possible framing in the first place.
The wrong crop can also be a function of what lenses you have with you and what freedom you have to go to the place you would ideally like to take the shot from, so sometimes there are not enough degrees of freedom.
Just because you don't have the budget to get the right tool for the job doesn't magically make cropping a Good Thing. It's still a Bad Thing; your other options are just Worse Things like ripping off coke dealers, mugging the elderly, or stealing from the collection plate at church. Having a low-resolution, heavily cropped image of a bird or whatever is better than having nothing, but it is never as good as having a full-resolution image that didn't need to be cropped in the first place.
If you find it necessary to crop most of your images taken under conditions where getting the optimal framing in-camera was possible, but simply failed to happen, that is an indication your composing skill needs improvement. Cropping is not something one ought to celebrate or tout as a Good Thing or recommend to others as good photographic technique; it's a necessary evil that should be avoided whenever possible.
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No, it's always a bad thing.
Having a low-resolution, heavily cropped image of a bird or whatever is better than having nothing, but it is never as good as having a full-resolution image that didn't need to be cropped in the first place.
So you think that budget for the "appropriate" equipment is the reigning factor in the take? For example, when on an evening walk not specifically or primarily for photography, and I capture a bird with the ZS3 pocket camera, and crop 50 percent, it would have been preferable to haul the DSLR and big heavy zoom for that shot? Or maybe you're saying don't bother with the small camera - just wait for the photo walk to snap those birds?
"No it's always a bad thing" is so absolutist I can't imagine you can continue to defend it against all situations.
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I think we're getting somewhere.
If we could say it's not always (or by definition) a bad thing either we've achieved a mutual understanding.
Also I think there is a difference with exposure. There's no technical reason to get the exposure wrong. The wrong crop can also be a function of what lenses you have with you and what freedom you have to go to the place you would ideally like to take the shot from, so sometimes there are not enough degrees of freedom.
I doubt anyone on here would disagree that there are times when you can't avoid cropping. The question is, should you try your best to frame the picture properly in the first place or is it all right to shoot loosely and then try to turn the result into something worthwhile in post-processing. I doubt not having the right lenses with you enters into the question. Having what you need with you is part of the job. As Jonathan pointed out many posts back, that's what zoom lenses are for. In the fifties the distorted, soft zoom lenses available didn't make sense for serious work, but nowadays zooms such as the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G are the equal of any prime around. It's impossible to see that much detail on a computer screen, but here are two examples with a modern zoom lens. You can at least get the idea.
[attachment=13677:Andalusia_1.jpg] [attachment=13678:Andalusia_2.jpg]
And before someone suggests there's pincushion distortion in the picture on the left I'd suggest looking higher up the wall. The whole wall is sagging at the left end.
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I doubt anyone on here would disagree that there are times when you can't avoid cropping. The question is, should you try your best to frame the picture properly in the first place or is it all right to shoot loosely and then try to turn the result into something worthwhile in post-processing. I doubt not having the right lenses with you enters into the question. Having what you need with you is part of the job. As Jonathan pointed out many posts back, that's what zoom lenses are for. In the fifties the distorted, soft zoom lenses available didn't make sense for serious work, but nowadays zooms such as the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G are the equal of any prime around. It's impossible to see that much detail on a computer screen, but here are two examples with a modern zoom lens. You can at least get the idea.
Most of what you've said and others have said is common knowledge on LL, and really doesn't need repeated. But I've had the argument about computers for 25 years, which applies to cameras as well. It doesn't matter so much which tool is right for the job, when you're not specifically "on the job". What matters in many situations, and dare I say in most situations (unless you have your Big Iron with you 24/7) is what tools you have with you right at the moment. And given what you have, you may require cropping. Big zooms are *not* carried around a lot by a lot of photographers, 24/7.
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Big zooms are *not* carried around a lot by a lot of photographers, 24/7.
Depends on the photographers. Yes, if you're in the grocery store with your point and shoot hanging in a bag off your shoulder and the building catches fire you're going to have to make do with what you have on hand, but that's not what we've been talking about. At least I don't think that's what we've been talking about. If you set out to shoot pictures you ought to know what kind of pictures you're after and be appropriately equipped.
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So you think that budget for the "appropriate" equipment is the reigning factor in the take? For example, when on an evening walk not specifically or primarily for photography, and I capture a bird with the ZS3 pocket camera, and crop 50 percent, it would have been preferable to haul the DSLR and big heavy zoom for that shot?
Or maybe you're saying don't bother with the small camera - just wait for the photo walk to snap those birds?
If the ultimate purpose is to get a decent shot of the birds, then absolutely yes. The DSLR + telephoto lens is obviously going to be heavier and less convenient to carry than the digicam with the shorter lens. But the DSLR is equally obviously going to get you a better capture than the digicam because of the longer lens (and less need for cropping) and the overall higher image quality. Assuming it is competently operated of course. If you want to pound screws into concrete with a block of moldy cheese, feel free to do so. But don't be surprised when others fail to be convinced of the persuasiveness of your arguments for doing so.
Carrying a smaller, lighter, less capable camera may be a convenient compromise but you're wasting your time to try to argue it's the superior photographic option. You're compromising the final result for the sake of personal convenience. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that; I've done it myself--I took an Olympus digicam with me to Iraq instead of my Canon DSLR gear for exactly that reason. 40lbs of camera gear on top of 60lbs of body armor, weapon, ammunition, aid bag, and other miscellaneous gear is just a bit too much. But I've never tried to kid myself that I got better photos from the digicam than I would have from the Canons, I just got something in circumstances where I would have gotten nothing otherwise. Half a loaf is better than none, but not as good as the whole loaf.
"No it's always a bad thing" is so absolutist I can't imagine you can continue to defend it against all situations.
You are being quite obtuse. Cropping is sometimes necessary, but that doesn't mean that having to do it is ever a good thing. It's simply the least undesirable thing. It's always best to get the composition as close to the final print as possible in-camera. A cropped image is never as good as an uncropped image shot with the same camera having the same exposure, focus, and composition as the cropped image. Ergo, a competent photographer will always strive to compose in-camera so that cropping is unnecessary or only needed in smallest possible doses.
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You're compromising the final result for the sake of personal convenience.
I've done it myself--I took an Olympus digicam with me to Iraq instead of my Canon DSLR gear.....
Not carrying a big DSLR and huge telephoto lens everywhere(!) is merely personal convenience? You are so far out on a limb with that one you're not even funny any more.
And of course you did it yourself, and now you want to flog the rest of us as your penance, I suppose.
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We all agree. Cropping is a bad thing if you don't have to do it. If you do have to do it (for many, many possible reasons) then it's not a bad thing, but it's not as good as if you didn't have to do it -- but, you might have to do it.
I've always been tolerant of cropping because any serious work I was doing was going to be printed in a newspaper, where resolution isn't the main thing, since the picture is being printed on toilet paper run through a high speed press.
But further, in a newspaper, the photographer doesn't make the final decision on how a photo will be used. How a photo looks will almost always be affected by its surroundings. For example, the most important column in a newspaper usually is the rightmost one, where the story would drop out of the headline. If you have a shot of a guy looking to the right, he's looking right out of the newspaper. A much better shot would be to have that guy (the principal subject) on the left edge of that photo, looking AT something further right, which acts as a block so that he's no longer looking out of the newspaper. On the other hand, if it turns out that the story is the second most important, that would be in the far left column, and having him look to the right is fine, so you want the largest possible picture of his head... Since the USE of a photo is being determined by the the news of the day, and not by a photographer, the photographer will tend to take photos with space around them, to be cropped to the best possible use given the placement in the paper. If he doesn't do that, if he goes for a final in-camera crop, giving the editors no options, it's possible that the photo won't be used at all, and he'll be dealing with pissed-off editors who consider him incompetent.
Rather than attacking cropping, I think a better general statement to make would be that...
"It always best to have available the largest possible number of pixels to generate the final print."
Then you're not trying to force a natural 2x3 composition into a 6x7 box. Instead of focusing on an artificial constraint (the aspect ratio of the sensor or film), you first see the composition, and then figure out how to get the most pixels in it.
JC
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And of course you did it yourself, and now you want to flog the rest of us as your penance, I suppose.
You are being intentionally stupid now. If you want to use less-than-optimal gear or techniques for convenience' sake or due to budget constraints or whatever reason, that's fine. You aren't breaking any laws or harming anyone, except possibly yourself. Not everyone can afford a DSLR kit, and even fewer can afford a MFDB. And given the advance of technology, even if you do get the absolute best camera, in a few months something better will come along. Everyone has to live with constraints on their time, their budget, and how much camera stuff they want to carry around. There's nothing wrong with that; it's just how the universe works.
I'm just calling bullshit on your attempt to present your obviously-less-than-optimal technique as somehow being technically or creatively superior to the notion of getting things as right as possible in-camera when the shutter releases. Consistently having to chop off 40% of your images should be a giant neon red flag with flashing lights and sirens that you have a problem, the same as if you were constantly having to set the exposure slider in the RAW converter to +2 stops. If you are consistently chopping off 40% of your images, you are either using the wrong tool for the job, or your composition skills are pathetically lacking. Either way, you should be looking at the hack job you're perpetrating on your images as something unfortunate to be reduced or avoided whenever possible, not as a sign of your creative genius in seeing new compositional possibilities after the fact.
Shit happens. Underexposure happens. Misfocus happens. So does cropping. But that doesn't mean you should stick your finger in it, swirl it around, lick it off, and tell everyone it's chocolate ice cream.
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Rather than attacking cropping, I think a better general statement to make would be that...
"It always best to have available the largest possible number of pixels to generate the final print."
Then you're not trying to force a natural 2x3 composition into a 6x7 box. Instead of focusing on an artificial constraint (the aspect ratio of the sensor or film), you first see the composition, and then figure out how to get the most pixels in it.
JC
I have never denigrated the notion of cropping for the sake of converting from the camera aspect ratio to the print aspect ratio. I've stated several times now that that is NOT the kind of cropping I object to. Every image has an optimal aspect ratio, which generally is not the same as the camera's. When they are not the same, then you simply can't use all of the original capture's pixels in the final print. All I have ever said (though in somewhat different terms) is that one of the goals of a competent photographer is to get as many pixels as possible from the original capture into the final print.
Dale Thorn seems to be taking a very different view; that consistently throwing away ~40% of the original capture is not a problem to be solved, but a sign of superior creative vision being able to discover many different alternate/preferable compositions after the fact. I disagree; I think that a competent photographer should be able to consistently compose the image sufficiently well at the time of shutter release that little or no cropping (other than the bare minimum required to change aspect ratio) is needed later. Stated differently, visualization of the composition of the final print should happen before shutter release, not after.
Your example of shooting for a newspaper is a bit of a special case; when you have no control over the aspect ratio of the final print then of course you can't frame as tightly. The key difference is that you made a conscious decision to leave extra room around the edges to accommodate the needs of the client.
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Dale Thorn seems to be taking a very different view; that consistently throwing away ~40% of the original capture is not a problem to be solved, but a sign of superior creative vision being able to discover many different alternate/preferable compositions after the fact. I disagree; I think that a competent photographer should be able to consistently compose the image sufficiently well at the time of shutter release that little or no cropping (other than the bare minimum required to change aspect ratio) is needed later. Stated differently, visualization of the composition of the final print should happen before shutter release, not after.
I think I'm somewhere in the middle (and we can probably talk till the cows come home, since in essence we agree). Obviously if you can compose "right" in the viewfinder w/o the need to do any serious cropping that is preferred and delivers the theoretically best IQ picture, but to picture people who crop most their images as "picture bangers without foresight" and thereby looking down on them as photographers is too much of a generalisation for me. I have no problem with someone "seeing" a picture, framing not fully accurate and getting the final crop "just right" in the darkroom or on the computer. I do not see why the value of the end product would be influenced by this process choice if the resulting quality is only impacted theoretically, but invisible.
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But you missed my point, which is this: when you underexpose, you can compensate by making the appropriate adjustments in the RAW converter, but underexposing always has a negative effect on the final print. In the same way, if you fail to compose properly, you can compensate by cropping, but the result of doing so is always inferior to shooting with the best possible framing in the first place.
Don't think I missed your point, obviously underexposre as well as cropping both theoretically degrade image quality and both should be avoided if possible. However you missed my point. With exposure you always have all degrees of freedom available to get it right. As you point out sometimes you don't have the time to do it (or lose the shot) but theoretically it is always possible to get the right exposure since the camera can be dialed there.
Getting the right crop in the viewfinder certainly has lower degrees of freedom like lens available and freedom to move around both hamper getting it right.
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Getting the right crop in the viewfinder certainly has lower degrees of freedom like lens available and freedom to move around both hamper getting it right.
OK, I agree with that. Sometimes the "perfect" POV is impossible to get to, like inside a mountain or way over the edge of a cliff, etc. But given sufficient time, you can always dial in optimum exposure.
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You are being intentionally stupid now. If you want to use less-than-optimal gear or techniques for convenience' sake or due to budget constraints or whatever reason, that's fine.
You make valid points on a purely technical basis, but those are points we already clearly understand. In fact, we understood those years ago. What you've avoided admitting is that the right tool for the "job" (more about that later) is the tool you have here and now, not the tool you claim you're going to have when you come back for the "real" shoot. I've been in thousands of places and situations where better tools than I had would have been preferable, yet I captured things that no one else did, because they didn't have anything better, or most often, they didn't have a camera handy at all. I get out there with the big camera and big lens as much as anyone, but I often find that I'm getting more, and more interesting photos when all I have is the little camera along. And there, cropping is just a technical matter - how much is needed -vs- how much can I get away with. As far as the "job" is concerned, sure, I go prepared. But I don't think that's particularly newsworthy, since I'm not publishing a journal like LLVJ. And I never suggested I would go into people's offices with a Leica M6 and take portraits, then scan the film and crop it to death. There's obviously no point in that. My original point, which is as valid as ever, is I take the photo with whatever I have handy at the time, and crop it as needed. If little or no crop is needed, all the better, but I'm not going to get paranoid about it.
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In other words, "My photos never need cropping, but everybody else's does." Yes, Ray, I think I've met a couple of photographers who think that way.
Eric, thanks for remembering me.
Yes, I do try to compose precisely in the viewfinder, and crop minimally if at for my prints, almost all of which have the same aspect ratio. But I arrive at this practice not for "artistic" reasons, but for "pragmatic" reasons.
1. In the traditional darkroom, I quickly realized that the IQ of an enlarged print from a small crop would suffer. The same holds true for digital images.
2. I am frugal (or a cheap skate), and do not want a square micron of film or sensor going to waste.
3. During my days in a camera club, the slide competition judges had nothing better to pick on than minor blemishes along the borders that could have been easily cropped in prints. (Although my precisely composed slides didn't have this problem, it was one of the many reasons I left camera clubs.)
4. When I started showing my prints, all my images fit nicely in the same aspect ratio mat windows/frames. This makes it easier/less costly to purchase and cut the same materials, and to remat and reframe with the different prints.
Precise composing in the viewfinder forces me to slow down before releasing the shutter. It also forces me to try different compositions by varying angles of view, distances, etc. With digital, I relax my compositions somewhat, keeping the possibility (or intent) of PS cloning/transforming/merging, etc. later in mind. I definitely do not belong to the school of "shoot now, ask questions later."
Once I get into this grove, there are only rare occasions that I would need major cropping. Not trying to convince others this is anything better, just my way.
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What you've avoided admitting is that the right tool for the "job" (more about that later) is the tool you have here and now, not the tool you claim you're going to have when you come back for the "real" shoot.
You're raising a strawman argument here. I've never argued against that point; I freely admitted to doing exactly that when I went to Iraq and took a digicam instead of my DSLRs. Everyone has limits to their budget and how much stuff they can or desire to carry; what you choose to shoot with is your choice.
My original point, which is as valid as ever, is I take the photo with whatever I have handy at the time, and crop it as needed. If little or no crop is needed, all the better, but I'm not going to get paranoid about it.
No, your original point was:
Cropping is very valuable because I can spend much more time in the field looking for possible images and capturing "around" them a dozen different ways, then be concerned about rotation (that comes first) and cropping when I'm back in the lab.
and
Those who crop regularly are probably taking a lot more photos of a bigger variety of subjects.
i.e. the inverse of the quoted statement is: "People who rarely crop are usually concentrating on getting that "one good shot" and miss many opportunities that other photographers are taking advantage of."
Your first statement can be reworded as "I shoot around the subject and figure out the composition later via cropping." The second statement is basically "If you don't do as I do, then you will miss many opportunities to capture a great image." That is what I'm arguing against, not the red herring issue of shooting with the convenient camera in hand vs. the better camera at home in the closet. It is not necessary for a competent photographer to "shoot loose and crop later" to avoid missing opportunities; a good photographer can simultaneously capture the moment consistently and compose precisely enough that minimal cropping is necessary later.
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FWIW, I don't care one way or the other whether I crop in pp or not, AS LONG AS I had visualized and intended the crop when initially framing the image. Usually it is an aspect ratio issue, but every now and then there's crap on one edge such that framing in the other direction puts worse crap in the image. Maybe that's aspect ratio as well. But when I look at the image when editing and decide to crop then because I notice something I didn't in the field, I go "ooops".
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Having just posted a comment that's reasonably in keeping with the topic, I though I'd ask in a separate post: Has anyone reading this thread changed their behavior, or gained any new insight based on the discussion? No? Hmmm, didn't think so.
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One of the joys of using a 5*4 sheet film camera or a 50Mpx DSLR is that you can crop and still get a good A3.
Particularly if you use primes, you often have the option of shooting knowing that you might need to crop, or missing the shot.
If you shoot a wedding group with a 50 or 160 Mpx camera, can you produce a decent portrait of everyone in the picture?
Instead of using very long lenses e.g. for wildlife, you an use the camera remotely, with or without a power head, with live view, or unmanned with a shutter beam... if you are not there to compose the shot...
As I am currently limited to 50 Mpx, and want to print 24 * 34" @240 camera pixels per print inch, I try to avoid cropping.
With commercial (advertising) photography I would be unlikely to crop, as "they" often need space for text... you can increase the size of the pic and paint it in!
For a panoramic landscape I would prefer to stitch and increase res rather than crop and loose res.
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I've cropped this one down to the bare essence. I'm shamed to admit I didn't see this in the field. But I am happy with how it prints at pretty much any size. Just need to use the proper enlarging technique.
Right here >>>>>
[attachment=13692:EffectiveCrop.jpg]
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I've cropped this one down to the bare essence. I'm shamed to admit I didn't see this in the field. But I am happy with how it prints at pretty much any size. Just need to use the proper enlarging technique.
Right here >>>>>
[attachment=13692:EffectiveCrop.jpg]
<<<<<
Love the expressions on those faces, Mr P; puts me in mind of the time I
Funny how old HC-B gets roped into these circular arguments: has nobody ever seen reproductions of his contact sheets? So many decisive moments, one right after the other!
Regarding the main topic - I thought - of cropping, there is no sin there at all. I have done this a hell of lot and have no regrets whatsoever. Far from thinking the worse of myself for it, I know perfectly well that it does, in reality, signify the absolute opposite of the negative scenario that many here would paint. What it shows to me, actually, is that my work with les girls has been a damn sight better than I had previously imagined it to be, in that I was able to get them to work with me well enough to provide situations where more than just one element came to its peak.
I shall attempt to explain. I have a particular shot from the Bahamas where the girl is playing the hoary old chestnut of holding a conch shell to her ear. Her boobs are magnificently lit by the sun, her head is tilited up and her eyes closed. This is framed horizontal from around crotch level upwards and the framing is just beautiful - I would not change a thing. Shooting as many exposures on Kodachrome as it took to get that shot, why should I want to change anything? I´ll tell you why - looking at it on the screen a couple of nights ago, entirely and solely from the point of view of wondering how well it or any similar shot coped at 100% compared to a digital frame at 100% (the Kodachrome, for my money, came tops) it suddenly struck me that the close-up of the face, the shell and the shoulders (above the boobs, nothing overtly sexy in crop) made a lovely image all of its own, one I had never noticed before.
No, I have no present intention of making that into a print; but it could be done and might work very well indeed. Since the original framing was great, where the cropping-as-sin?
A further example, from another location - Lindos, Rhodes - and another girl next to a small boat. The original shot was not used at all by the client, if only because he never saw it as I felt it wasn´t good enough to grace a full page on his calendar and I don´t like taking those sorts of risks! However, I didn´t throw it away, just let it lie in the file for the past twenty-five years or so. Then, after the entry of scanners and digital printing into my life, I thought about it again and played with it. I ended up getting a rather pleasing (to me) narrow vertical shot which cuts out the boat entirely. I also cropped most of her face out, leaving in only from about half-way down the bridge of her nose. She was beautiful so no physical problems, just an artistic idea on my part, and a particularly beautiful mouth; the girl, that is. If that were not enough, I then decided that the light on the boob on the left was so good that it made a shot of its own. I blew this up and added grain in the form of noise (all this, by the way, is on b/w conversions from the Kodachrome originals - I never feel like printing girls in colour for myself) and it now sits, as a square within a full A3+ sheet of Hahnemuehle Rag on the wall in the spare bedroom. Happy dreams, somebody.
This is something I find myself doing more and more. Partly because as a retired person I have no intention of shelling out that sort of money to any model and, secondly, because it gives my old stuff an entirely new phase of life.
I reject out of hand any suggestions that cropping after the fact indicates failure at the moment of shooting. Why assume there has to be something wrong with the original shot? In many cases, as with the latter example, even cropping to extreme can make a far more engaging image. Why ever not take advantage of the material you already have? I thought photography was supposed to be for the enjoyment of free spirits, not the following of somebody else´s rules! Just as in the camera-club example somebody posted earlier on. Best quitting that lot!
One thing: I am happy playing this game with film. Imagine trying to play it with digital capture... no, best not.
Rob C
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I reject out of hand any suggestions that cropping after the fact indicates failure at the moment of shooting. Why assume there has to be something wrong with the original shot? In many cases, as with the latter example, even cropping to extreme can make a far more engaging image.
I think it's safe to say you failed to recognize those image opportunities at the time of the shoot. If you had, would you have been content to crop them out of what you'd already shot as you describe, or would you have moved in and exposed a few more frames? I suspect that you'd be even happier with your example images if you'd seen them during the shoot and devoted an entire frame* to them.
*Within the constraints of camera aspect ratio vs. image aspect ratio...
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Funny how old HC-B gets roped into these circular arguments: has nobody ever seen reproductions of his contact sheets? So many decisive moments, one right after the other!
Yes, I have seen a few, and you're right, it's one perfectly or almost perfectly composed shot after another. That's because he knew exactly what he was after before he raised his camera.
I think Jonathan just explained what's wrong with your argument, Rob. Perhaps what you're saying works best if you're shooting "hoary old chestnuts" in a studio setting. (And I'd consider shooting boobs on a beach with paid models a studio setting.) And though I loved film, I think that with digital you're able to shoot faster and you're able to make the extra exposures Jonathan suggested you ought to have made.
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I think it's safe to say you failed to recognize those image opportunities at the time of the shoot. If you had, would you have been content to crop them out of what you'd already shot as you describe, or would you have moved in and exposed a few more frames? I suspect that you'd be even happier with your example images if you'd seen them during the shoot and devoted an entire frame* to them.
*Within the constraints of camera aspect ratio vs. image aspect ratio...
Why do you "by definition" look down so much on people's results when they crop later in their creative process. I think in this thread the theoretical image resolution reduction is established but besides that I have not found evidence that everybody who crops later doesn't know what they're doing, didn't recognise a good shot beforehand, are just lucky to have even produced a picture. I can even agree there are some people like that but I simply do not believe that people who crop later in their creative process are "by definition" all like that. You keep saying so but other than "believe me" I have found no evidence.
Another remark (technical now) : moving in changes perspective, so "zooming with your feet" gives different images vs. zooming with your lens (or changing to a different focal length)
To answer Tim Gray's question: this thread isn't old enough to have changed my habits, but thinking about it will probably lead me to framing more accurately in the future, however not in a rigid/dogmatic way and with an open mind to both myself and others who do use a crop to produce a better image.
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I freely admitted to doing exactly that....
Your first statement can be reworded as "I shoot around the subject and figure out the composition later via cropping."
1. Why not just admit your guilt and quit being so judgemental?
2. You would have to reword and reinterpret to get there.
3. I'm not just a one-act person. I do the conservative portraits the conservative way, do landscapes the landscape way, and freeform stuff the freeform way. No rules there, just guidelines. Your rules are just too rigid.
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Yes, I have seen a few, and you're right, it's one perfectly or almost perfectly composed shot after another. That's because he knew exactly what he was after before he raised his camera.
The problem I see here is that the best pros in any field might *look* good every day, but in truth, those events where everything goes according to plan, i.e. where everything "clicks" almost perfectly, are the exception, not the norm. Not to say you shouldn't be all you can be, but unless I'm there looking over the shoulders of these erstwhile photo-gods every minute while they work, I won't see all the flubs, missed shots, wrong decisions, and numerous technical problems they experienced, which are long since buried and forgotten.
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Why do you "by definition" look down so much on people's results when they crop later in their creative process. I think in this thread the theoretical image resolution reduction is established but besides that I have not found evidence that everybody who crops later doesn't know what they're doing, didn't recognise a good shot beforehand, are just lucky to have even produced a picture. I can even agree there are some people like that but I simply do not believe that people who crop later in their creative process are "by definition" all like that. You keep saying so but other than "believe me" I have found no evidence.
Cropping does not necessarily mean a photographer doesn't know what he is doing, and I never said anything remotely resembling "anyone who crops is lucky to have even gotten a picture". But unless framing loosely was done for a specific reason (newspaper work, yearbook photos, etc) cropping does generally mean that the photographer either failed to recognize an opportunity during the shoot (Rob C's examples fall into this category; there's some evidence for you), or recognized an opportunity but failed to capture it optimally (See any online critique site, and you'll find plenty of examples). Every photographer needs to crop at times, myself included.
What nobody in this thread has offered is anything remotely resembling a plausible and coherent explanation as to why cropping after the fact might superior to getting the framing right in-camera. I'm happy that Rob is having fun finding images within images as he goes through his archives, but that doesn't mean that the nuggets he finds are better just because they are crops. Dale's claim that trying to get the framing right in-camera will force one to miss other photographic opportunities is simply idiotic. His claim that shooting with loose framing allows one to explore many different compositions from a single frame has some validity, but you can accomplish the same thing by shooting more than one frame while varying the composition to see which works best. Then you can simply select the best image of the series, and there's little or no reason to crop. Can anyone give me any good reason why cropping should be the first choice, rather than a backup plan used only when something didn't go as planned?
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1. Why not just admit your guilt and quit being so judgemental?
I admitted that I crop on occasion and that I don't always use the "best" camera available before you made the accusation. WTF more do you want?
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I admitted that I crop on occasion and that I don't always use the "best" camera available before you made the accusation. WTF more do you want?
Among other things, the "I've seen no evidence..." comments demonstrate rigidity. I have a lens that goes to 400 mm (35mm equiv.), and I will shoot birds with that lens and no other, even when it means cropping 40 percent. You can claim it's not the right tool for the job, or make any other claim you want, but it is in fact the perfect tool for the job, for all the reasons I've stated. You'll never understand, and miss a lot of opportunities for that reason.
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What nobody in this thread has offered is anything remotely resembling a plausible and coherent explanation as to why cropping after the fact might superior to getting the framing right in-camera.
Now you're putting the logic in reverse. You claimed getting the composition right in camera was superior to after the fact cropping for more reasons than resolution alone. All I am arguing is that except for resolution loss (until it becomes visible) cropping is not inferior to getting it dead-on right when taking the shot. I never claimed it was better.
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What nobody in this thread has offered is anything remotely resembling a plausible and coherent explanation as to why cropping after the fact might superior to getting the framing right in-camera.
Jonathan,
You seem to have a notion that there is an absolute and objectively correct cropping for every image, or a right and wrong cropping, or a superior and inferior cropping. I would suggest that there exists only a preferred cropping, and that sometimes, upon reflection in the calm of one's studio, one might discover alternative cropping options that one prefers to the original concept one had at the time the shot was taken.
Some photographers prefer to process their images only when a significant period of time has elapsed, after taking the shots. This is presumably to help them create a distance between the personal emotion at the time of the shot and the more contemplative process of creating a picture with more universal appeal.
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The problem I see here is that the best pros in any field might *look* good every day, but in truth, those events where everything goes according to plan, i.e. where everything "clicks" almost perfectly, are the exception, not the norm. Not to say you shouldn't be all you can be, but unless I'm there looking over the shoulders of these erstwhile photo-gods every minute while they work, I won't see all the flubs, missed shots, wrong decisions, and numerous technical problems they experienced, which are long since buried and forgotten.
Dale, According to your profile you've been around long enough to know what a contact sheet is. Knowing that you must realize that when you look at a contact sheet you are, in effect, looking over the photographer's shoulder. That's why looking at one of HCB's contact sheets is so interesting. Not every shot on the sheet may be perfect in every respect, but the distribution of forms -- the composition -- is consistently excellent. I can guarantee from personal experience that in a war zone everything doesn't go accoring to plan, nor does everything go according to plan when you're shooting on the street. In fact, on the street, there is no plan.
I looked at your web, trying to see whether or not your own photographs bear out your position that loose shooting and salvaging the results in post-processing is a more effective approach then seeing and framing the shot at the time you shoot. Unfortunately, all I can find there is two copies of what looks like a photograph of a painting. I'm afraid these examples don't exactly support your position.
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Dale, According to your profile you've been around long enough to know what a contact sheet is. Knowing that you must realize that when you look at a contact sheet you are, in effect, looking over the photographer's shoulder. That's why looking at one of HCB's contact sheets is so interesting. Not every shot on the sheet may be perfect in every respect, but the distribution of forms -- the composition -- is consistently excellent. I can guarantee from personal experience that in a war zone everything doesn't go accoring to plan, nor does everything go according to plan when you're shooting on the street. In fact, on the street, there is no plan.
I looked at your web, trying to see whether or not your own photographs bear out your position that loose shooting and salvaging the results in post-processing is a more effective approach then seeing and framing the shot at the time you shoot. Unfortunately, all I can find there is two copies of what looks like a photograph of a painting. I'm afraid these examples don't exactly support your position.
My father-in-law, who did the paintings some of which are shown on the website, left thousands of slides, negatives, and contact sheets. I've seen contact prints for everything from 4x5 down to 35 mm. Now, a lot of people just don't care if you look at their contact prints or transparencies, but those people are usually not in danger of having their reputation tarnished by a bad review of their not-so-good efforts that they didn't bother to burn. But some pros are very sensitive about those things, and they don't want you to see their failures - just their successes. You may have come across some famous person who died and had their lab ransacked and their experiments and failures put on public display, I don't know. It sounds like what you're talking about is some person or persons who've sanitized their work in a given area and made that public. I've done many projects like that, to make it look like I do near-perfect work routinely. No biggie.
Now your statement about loose shooting and salvaging are just plain incorrect. Loose shooting sounds bad, and you no doubt have your view of what I do that's just not right. By loose, I certainly do mean looser than a certain someone here, but not so loose I'm just waving the camera and clicking. I know exactly what I'm pointing at, and I do compose, and merely allow a little room for error. And why not? I'm not going to devote valuable time at $200/hour to being anal retentive about shooting perfection when I can get close enough and do the final adjustments in the lab. And don't say I'm spending the same amount of time in the lab - we can waste pages here arguing about that, and you just need to understand I know what I'm doing. When I say some crops are 40 percent, that's not "more than a little room for error", that's because the thing I'm trying to capture is a wild bird who doesn't pose, or let me get close enough. Switching to a giant zoom and heavy tripod is absurd and extremely counter-productive for my applications, as long as I get a good enough result in spite of cropping. Judge the final output, nothing else.
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All I am arguing is that except for resolution loss (until it becomes visible) cropping is not inferior to getting it dead-on right when taking the shot. I never claimed it was better.
So if cropping after the fact isn't "better", and always causes some degree of resolution loss (which is going to make the image worse most of the time), why defend it as a preferred method?
I have a lens that goes to 400 mm (35mm equiv.), and I will shoot birds with that lens and no other, even when it means cropping 40 percent. You can claim it's not the right tool for the job, or make any other claim you want, but it is in fact the perfect tool for the job, for all the reasons I've stated.
If you have to crop off an average of 40% of every frame you shoot with that lens, then it is not the perfect tool for the job. It may the best tool you can afford, or the heaviest lens you can comfortably carry, but it is definitely not ideal. My longest lens is 350mm, and even with a 1.4x teleconverter on a body with a 1.3x crop factor (1D-II), I still find it difficult to shoot birds without needing to crop. It's the best combination of tools I have for that purpose, but it certainly isn't perfect. There's a big difference.
You'll never understand, and miss a lot of opportunities for that reason
Given what I've seen of your work vs. mine, I'm pretty sure I understand more than you think I do. For example, I understand that if you had used a polarizer when you shot these, you wouldn't be able to see a distracting reflection of the trees and sky behind you in the glass:
[attachment=13702:P0001025...06_large.JPG] [attachment=13703:P0001037...36_large.jpg]
It looks like you were wearing a white shirt when you shot the one on the left. Here's a tip: when shooting things with reflective surfaces, wear dark-colored clothing unless you're trying to show up in the reflections. I also understand that if you'd temporarily placed a mirror over the artwork to help you align the camera squarely to the art, you wouldn't have ended up with these perfectly composed and cropped gems:
[attachment=13704:P0000152...10_large.jpg] [attachment=13705:P0001060...51_large.jpg] [attachment=13706:P0001091...35_large.jpg]
Most people but their best work on their web site, not their most embarrassing mistakes. If that is true in your case, you have a lot to learn about cropping, composition, and photography in general. Regardless of which is the case, you aren't exactly bolstering your credibility on the subject of cropping and composition here.
You keep making the claim that I am missing opportunities when I shoot. What evidence do you have to support that claim? Have you ever observed me shoot? Have you looked at any of my work, or met any of my clients? No? I didn't think so.
When I'm out shooting personal stuff, I typically pick a subject and then shoot a multiple frames of it, experimenting with various perspectives and compositions. Sometimes I'll only shoot 4-6 frames, but occasionally I'll shoot 20-30, if the lighting is tricky, it's a windy day, or there's some other factor going on that reduces the probability of getting a good capture. My family jokes about me being the only photographer they know who routinely shoots a dozen or more photos of the same thing. But when I go through the images later, I don't have to settle for trying various crops of one loosely-framed capture to see what composition works best. Instead, I can usually just choose the shot of that subject has the best overall composition to begin with.
I'm not missing opportunities; I'm capturing more of them while shooting so I don't have to crop them out of other frames after the fact.
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If you have to crop off an average of 40% of every frame you shoot with that lens, then it is not the perfect tool for the job.
I understand that if you had used a polarizer when you shot these, you wouldn't be able to see a distracting reflection of the trees and sky behind you in the glass:
Funny stuff. Cropping 40% all the time sounds bad - fortunately that's the case only for small birds. Even so, the results may or may not justify the effort - it's always case by case in the final analysis.
I forgive you for assuming my website contains my work. To date, no. My late mother-in-law shot the paintings with a 1mp Kodak DC260, and her daughter did the crops. Eventually I will get around to posting some stuff there - software, and some photos, a few essays.
Bad as the painting photos are, they do manage to convey a sense of what the artists's range was. And since he isn't/wasn't famous, it's disconcerting to think about where many of those paintings are going to end up.
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So if cropping after the fact isn't "better", and always causes some degree of resolution loss (which is going to make the image worse most of the time), why defend it as a preferred method?
Again you're using the wrong logic and making wrong interpretations of my point. I have never claimed it is the "preferred method". All I am saying is that cropping after the fact (until it becomes visible due to low resolution) is not by definition inferior to getting it right when pressing the shutter. You are claiming it is superior for more reasons than resolution alone but except for misinterpreting what others have said you have not been able to come up with one compelling argument to support this statement. I simply do not believe your generalisation that if someone doesn't get the crop right from the start he must do a lot of other things wrong as well, and therefore "be definition" will come up with lower quality pictures. Obviously there are examples that follow your logic, but that is no proof it's always the case.
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Bad as the painting photos are, they do manage to convey a sense of what the artists's range was. And since he isn't/wasn't famous, it's disconcerting to think about where many of those paintings are going to end up.
dalethorn, I like the paintings. Agree it's not the best pics but their subjects are nice. If the paintings are still in the family it might be worth getting your G1 and produce a good series with less reflections and better cropped. I think they're worth it, and it's a way to share his work and memory over a much larger community.
I especially like the two b&w portraits and the last one with the dog and the crab. Simple but nicely executed. I visited your website, and there are some other good ones as well.
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dalethorn, I like the paintings. Agree it's not the best pics but their subjects are nice. If the paintings are still in the family it might be worth getting your G1 and produce a good series with less reflections and better cropped. I think they're worth it, and it's a way to share his work and memory over a much larger community.
I especially like the two b&w portraits and the last one with the dog and the crab. Simple but nicely executed. I visited your website, and there are some other good ones as well.
Thanks for the comments. I think I could write a book on this topic alone. It's hard to appreciate how long it takes to un-glass and unwrap 1,500 or so paintings and photograph them, let alone PP the images. I was happy not to be asked to do any of that except get them started. One of the amusing things to observe was the difficulty they had with the file management, and sorting out the duplicates between the originals and cropped copies. Loads of fun (not!)
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So if cropping after the fact isn't "better", and always causes some degree of resolution loss (which is going to make the image worse most of the time), why defend it as a preferred method?
Of course that is the case; Rob C gave several examples of exactly that a few posts ago. But that does not negate the fact that those alternate compositions are not better just because they were discovered after the fact. If the photographer had discovered them while shooting, and had dedicated entire frames to them instead of cropping a piece out of a larger whole, in most cases the resulting image would have been better.
I understand what you're saying, but it comes across a bit odd. You seem to be saying if one discovers a better composition by cropping after the fact, it's not better than another shot one might have made, but didn't make for whatever reason.
There are a number of reasons why it might not be possible to get the ideal crop at the time the shot was taken.
(1) The viewfinder may cover only 95% of the frame and it's difficult to account for that exactly. A bit of guesswork is sometimes required.
(2) It's quite likely that the composition will frequently not match the aspect ratio of the camera, if one is fussy about such matters.
(3) The subject is dynamic and fleeting, or the lighting is changing quite rapidly. One might have time to take just one quick shot, but even if one had time to take 20 shots, the shot that is preferred because of its lighting, or an expression on a face, or a turn of the head, or the angle of a body, or the position of a bird's wings flying overhead, whatever, is the shot that needs cropping. The ones that don't need cropping are not preferred for other reasons. Resolution isn't everything.
(4) Most of us are in a state of continual artistic development. It's permitted to change one's mind about an image later.
I think it's understood by all who are concerned with maximising the resolution of their images, that it's advisable to strive to avoid the necessity of serious cropping in post processing. This point doesn't need to be laboured. It's one reason why zoom lenses are so popular.
I recall when I started scanning Kodachrome slides I'd taken 40 years ago with a Pentax Spotmatic and the standard 50mm lens, I couldn't understand why I'd been so sloppy with some of my compositions. I seemed to have sometimes chopped off parts of peoples' ears or the soles of their feet. Then I realised that the Kodachrome cardboard frame was masking a couple of millimetres on one side or another of the transparency. I spent hours transferring the slides to new plastic frames, paring the edges of the opening of each frame first, with a Stanley knife.
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It sounds like what you're talking about is some person or persons who've sanitized their work in a given area and made that public.
Dale, do you even know who Henri Cartier-Bresson was? Have you any idea where his contact sheets currently reside?
I've done many projects like that, to make it look like I do near-perfect work routinely. No biggie.
Well, if you say so, but I'm surprised you'd admit it.
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I understand what you're saying, but it comes across a bit odd. You seem to be saying if one discovers a better composition by cropping after the fact, it's not better than another shot one might have made, but didn't make for whatever reason.
A shot you have is always better than one you don't have, even if it's cropped heavily. But if you have a full-frame version of that composition, it's usually going to be better than the cropped version. Your third point covers many of the common reasons for "usually".
I've already addressed your second point several times; cropping to convert aspect ratio (trimming either the sides or the ends of the frame, but not both) is not what I've talking about. It's an unfortunate necessity until someone invents a camera with an adjustable aspect ratio.
Instead of relying on cropping one loosely-framed image to experiment with various compositions, I prefer to shoot several tightly-framed images of a subject with varied compositions. This increases the odds that when reviewing the images later, I can select one that has the most preferable composition without having to do much cropping. It gives me the same compositional after-the-fact flexibility that Dale and others have cited as an advantage of the "shoot loose and crop later" method, with all of the advantages that go with cropping less rather than more. When shooting the compositional variations, I can also vary my point of view and focus placement, which you can't do by simply cropping. The only disadvantage is more storage space needed for the additional RAWs, but hard drives are cheap. It's a small price to pay for using foresight rather than hindsight.
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Among other things, the "I've seen no evidence..." comments demonstrate rigidity. I have a lens that goes to 400 mm (35mm equiv.), and I will shoot birds with that lens and no other, even when it means cropping 40 percent. You can claim it's not the right tool for the job, or make any other claim you want, but it is in fact the perfect tool for the job, for all the reasons I've stated. You'll never understand, and miss a lot of opportunities for that reason.
Is that why this guy you posted over on User Critiques is so soft? Did you crop 40% or so?
[attachment=13707:Robin13.jpg]
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I've already addressed your second point several times; cropping to convert aspect ratio (trimming either the sides or the ends of the frame, but not both) is not what I've talking about. It's an unfortunate necessity until someone invents a camera with an adjustable aspect ratio.
In theory, it is entirely possible to design a digital camera that supports multiple aspect ratios, AND fully utilizes all the sensor's pixels in each ratio. For instance, a sensor's pixel circuits can be designed so that they can be "reconfigured" to fit each ratio and be fully utilized. Or, the sensor can have excess pixels, but marketed at a lower resolution to reflect the same pixel count for each ratio. (Fat chance for a camera, but not that far off on a computer memory chip. On a memory chip, there are excess cells meant to be marked bad, if necessary.) Or, like dual- and quad-core CPU chips on a computer, a camera can have multiple sensors, one for each ratio. Will we see any of these? Probably not.
In many situations, there is little choice but to work within a framework (pun unintended). A movie set designer, and a cinematographer comes to mind. Also a photog shooting for a full magazine page. If a movie camera can have variable aspect ratios as suggested above, will a movie be made with sequences of different ratios? Probably yes. But the movie maker will still compose carefully for each ratio, and make full use of each frame.
BTW, how many of you prefer a movie "reformatted for TV" over the original widescreen?
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It's an unfortunate necessity until someone invents a camera with an adjustable aspect ratio.
Jonathan, They already have. It's called the Nikon D3. The D3X does the same thing. Both cameras can be set the shoot at a 4 x 5 ratio. I prefer 2 x 3, but the option's there.
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Jonathan, They already have. It's called the Nikon D3. The D3X does the same thing. Both cameras can be set the shoot at a 4 x 5 ratio. I prefer 2 x 3, but the option's there.
Yes, but don't they only do that by throwing away pixels from the sensor, I'd rather do that on the computer and pay the penalty on storage size.
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Dale, do you even know who Henri Cartier-Bresson was? Have you any idea where his contact sheets currently reside?
Well, if you say so, but I'm surprised you'd admit it.
So Henri's contact sheets are unexpurgated, complete, original - no mistakes were ever deleted? Hmmmm. Most great masters in any field readily admit to gaffes from small to large. Einstein, Ansel, Beethoven. But not Henri. Nope.
Surprised I'd admit "cleansing" my files? My idols are a little different from yours I suspect. For photography I'd rather not say. In other contexts, Minnesota Fats comes to mind.
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Yes, but don't they only do that by throwing away pixels from the sensor, I'd rather do that on the computer and pay the penalty on storage size.
Pieter, It's a good point. The advantage is that you can compose properly on the camera. Yes, I don't like the idea of throwing away pixels -- on the camera or off, which is one reason I prefer the 2 x 3 aspect ratio.
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So Henri's contact sheets are unexpurgated, complete, original - no mistakes were ever deleted? Hmmmm. Most great masters in any field readily admit to gaffes from small to large. Einstein, Ansel, Beethoven. But not Henri. Nope.
Surprised I'd admit "cleansing" my files? My idols are a little different from yours I suspect. For photography I'd rather not say. In other contexts, Minnesota Fats comes to mind.
So I guess the answer is that you don't know who HCB was. Do you even know what a contact sheet is? Your idea that an outfit like Magnum would cheat on contact sheets for some unexplained advantage to a dead photographer is ludicrous beyond belief.
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So I guess the answer is that you don't know who HCB was. Do you even know what a contact sheet is? Your idea that an outfit like Magnum would cheat on contact sheets for some unexplained advantage to a dead photographer is ludicrous beyond belief.
Of course I don't know. I've only been doing this for 40 years. You're the one with all the answers. And your slave-like worship of Henri what's-his-name is really showing.
"You're asking me if I have a god complex. Let me tell you something - I am god." -- Alec Baldwin in Malice.
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Is that why this guy you posted over on User Critiques is so soft? Did you crop 40% or so?
[attachment=13707:Robin13.jpg]
DPReview just posted samples from the GH1 - look pretty much like G1 samples, i.e. soft. The only default setting I changed in standard film mode was to reduce the noise reduction. If I thought the camera could sharpen better than me, maybe I'd change that setting too.
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In theory, it is entirely possible to design a digital camera that supports multiple aspect ratios, AND fully utilizes all the sensor's pixels in each ratio.
The Panasonic LX3, ZS3/TZ7, and GH1 all support multiple aspect ratios of 4x3, 3x2, and 16x9 without *purely* cropping, but each step to the right loses some total pixel count anyway. With the LX3, it's 3648x2736 (9.98 mp), 3776x2520 (9.52 mp), and 3968x2232 (8.86 mp). So for me the question is, would preserving the original count of 9.98 mp be possible, and if so, would that require a larger, heavier lens, and/or would that entail a necessary compromise in quality or performance elsewhere?
Maybe we should all campaign for the mfr's to introduce a slider to smoothly move from 4x3 to 16x9 with no "steps" in between. That would be the better solution.
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I forgive you for assuming my website contains my work. To date, no.
Well that's the general assumption most people would make looking at photos on a web site with your name as the URL, and nothing to indicate any of the stuff had been shot by someone else. People have lost lawsuits over less.
My late mother-in-law shot the paintings with a 1mp Kodak DC260, and her daughter did the crops.
Are you sure about that?
Resolution of Kodak DC260: 1536x1024 (http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DC260/DC260Acgi.HTM)
Resolution of P0001091.60134635_large.jpg: 1280x1433
Getting a crop wider than the original image: Priceless
All of the EXIF data has been stripped out of the JPEGs, so there's no indication what the camera was.
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Of course I don't know.
Suspicions confirmed. You need to do a little reading on the history of photography, and you desperately need to look at photographs by the masters I listed earlier in this thread -- that is, assuming you aspire to become a serious photographer.
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DPReview just posted samples from the GH1 - look pretty much like G1 samples, i.e. soft. The only default setting I changed in standard film mode was to reduce the noise reduction. If I thought the camera could sharpen better than me, maybe I'd change that setting too.
Well, something certainly caused a sharpening problem, but you didn't answer the question: how much was the original shot cropped?
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Well that's the general assumption most people would make looking at photos on a web site with your name as the URL, and nothing to indicate any of the stuff had been shot by someone else. People have lost lawsuits over less.
Are you sure about that?
Resolution of Kodak DC260: 1536x1024 (http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DC260/DC260Acgi.HTM)
Resolution of P0001091.60134635_large.jpg: 1280x1433
Getting a crop wider than the original image: Priceless
All of the EXIF data has been stripped out of the JPEGs, so there's no indication what the camera was.
Kodak DC260, Mr. Know it all. Lawsuit from who? My deceased relatives for whom I am their sole heirs? Sure, why not. You be the lawyer.
Crop wider than original? Let's see, if you had some editing software, you couldn't figure out how to do that? They did, and I didn't ask how. Why should I? You are so anal retentive you shou;d be an interrogator in Iraq. Oopsie!
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Suspicions confirmed. You need to do a little reading on the history of photography, and you desperately need to look at photographs by the masters I listed earlier in this thread -- that is, assuming you aspire to become a serious photographer.
Actually, I don't need any such thing. I know a lot more than you. Why should I trade off my knowledge for your arrogant ignorance?
Addendum: I prefer to stand on my own two feet - you really shouldn't throw those other peoples' names around as though they approve of you and your interpretation of them.
Addendum #2: I don'thave masters - I'm a free person.
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Well, something certainly caused a sharpening problem, but you didn't answer the question: how much was the original shot cropped?
Whatever it was, 5 percent or 50, you wouldn't like it. I don't think it has a problem, but you do. That's OK with me. I appreciate your critique, though.
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Actually, I don't need any such thing. I know a lot more than you. Why should I trade off my knowledge for your arrogant ignorance?
Addendum: I prefer to stand on my own two feet - you really shouldn't throw those other peoples' names around as though they approve of you and your interpretation of them.
Addendum #2: I don'thave masters - I'm a free person.
Then you don't aspire to become a serious photographer?
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Then you don't aspire to become a serious photographer?
I don't aspire to become what you've become - a worshipper of false gods. I make money and contribute my share to the economy, so my existence is justified. Maybe you think I should become like one of the "masters" so people will worship me. No thank you.
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I don't aspire to become what you've become - a worshipper of false gods. I make money and contribute my share to the economy, so my existence is justified. Maybe you think I should become like one of the "masters" so people will worship me. No thank you.
Well, then, good luck with your snapshots. It takes a lot of work and study to become a serious photographer and not everyone has the time, skill, or inclination to become one.
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Well, then, good luck with your snapshots. It takes a lot of work and study to become a serious photographer and not everyone has the time, skill, or inclination to become one.
You certainly don't. The things I've done in photography you wouldn't understand, because your capacity for understanding is so limited. That's why you worship Henri what's-his-name, to fill the void in your own photographic talent.
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We have a confirmed troll here; adding to ignore list.
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We have a confirmed troll here; adding to ignore list.
Good decision, jonathan. You beat me to it.
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[quote name='Jonathan Wienke' date='May 16 2009, 01:19 PM' post='284151']
A shot you have is always better than one you don't have <snip>
You obviously haven't seen my photography... 8-)
Ray (if I may call you Ray) you make an interesting point about evolving views of photographs already taken, i.e. adjusting a crop later which I think is quite often done. Although the crop didn't change, you can see in what may be the most famous American art photo ever taken (Moonrise) a series of changes and adjustments in the darkroom over the years, with later prints becoming notably more dramatic and (simultaneously) delicate.
JC
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Ray (if I may call you Ray) you make an interesting point about evolving views of photographs already taken, i.e. adjusting a crop later which I think is quite often done. Although the crop didn't change, you can see in what may be the most famous American art photo ever taken (Moonrise) a series of changes and adjustments in the darkroom over the years, with later prints becoming notably more dramatic and (simultaneously) delicate.
JC
Hi John,
Ray's actually my first name, so no reason why you shouldn't call me Ray .
There's an interesting story about the taking of 'Moonrise over Hernandez' isn't there! It appears to have been a rushed job; a shot that was almost missed with no time to take a second shot before the magic of the scene had disappeared.
The shot appears to have been taken with reference to a remembered figure for the brightness of the moon. No light meter was used (couldn't find it I believe) and no exposure adjustment for the brightness of the foreground was made. I get the impression if Ansel had had more time to take the shot, the exposure would have been different. I think this was a technically difficult shot to process in the darkroom.
I'm sure Ansel would have been very happy with the processing power of Photoshop. It's interesting that the image does not appear to be cropped. It's still in its 8x10 aspect ratio, although it might be the case that the image has been cropped to the same aspect ratio. I'm assuming he used an 8x10 field camera for the shot.
What I find just a little bit absurd about Jonathan's approach to minimising the need for cropping, is an apparent over-emphasis on resolution. If one takes multiple shots of a scene, it is usually in order to get a better exposure, a better angle or perspective, a better rendition of light and shade or simply a more interesting shot if the subject is dynamic or moving to some degree.
When choosing just one of such multiple shots for display or print, I would always choose the most expressive and interesting shot and crop to taste. I would never choose a shot on the basis that it required less cropping and therefore had slightly greater resolution than a more interesting but similar shot which needed more cropping..
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Ray, John,
Agree with the points you're making. I know it's technically/theoretically preferable to crop as little as possible but I still prefer a cropped good image versus an uncropped not so good one any day. I don't see cropping as a failure, just one of the PP steps to get the best result from a shoot.
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Ray, John,
Agree with the points you're making. I know it's technically/theoretically preferable to crop as little as possible but I still prefer a cropped good image versus an uncropped not so good one any day. I don't see cropping as a failure, just one of the PP steps to get the best result from a shoot.
Pieter, I think we all agree on that point.
As far as Ansel's changes in Moonrise is concerned, Ansel was an experimenter. That's why he became the most outspoken supporter of the zone system and why he wrote those interesting books that put forth the results of his experiments. As Ray pointed out, Moonrise was a rush job. He had to get his stuff up onto the platform on top of his truck, get it in place, get a film holder into the camera, compose, and shoot. I never heard the part about not being able to find his light meter. It may be that he left it down below in the truck and realized he didn't have time to go back down for it. On the other hand, considering the nature of the scene, I'm not sure a light meter would have helped. Ansel had enough experience that he could make a truly informed guess at exposure, and that's what he did.
Ray, I agree with your point about resolution. On the other hand, as I'm sure you'd agree, if you're shooting something like landscape, really good resolution can help the result. On the street, though, and in most other situations, resolution is vastly overrated -- because it's something Pop Photography can measure, I'd guess. At the risk of causing Dale to have a stroke I'd point out that resolution is lousy in some of HCB's best early photographs, but they're still exceptionally fine work.
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When choosing just one of such multiple shots for display or print, I would always choose the most expressive and interesting shot and crop to taste. I would never choose a shot on the basis that it required less cropping and therefore had slightly greater resolution than a more interesting but similar shot which needed more cropping..
Along these lines, I would like to raise another point, which can be immediately attacked by both sides in this issue. The creative process is different for people, even of equal degrees of creativity. Handel wrote the Messiah in a couple of weeks, if legend is correct, and Beethoven would labor over each measure, writing and rewriting. Supposedly, some of his scores have pieces of music paper covering older versions of the same measure.
I mention this because when I see a scene I like, I try to fill the frame with it. I also take several angles, from several viewpoints and distances, trying to improve upon what I saw when first attracted to photograph the scene. I then go through a period when I hate every image because it didn't match what I saw in my mind's eye. A day or two later I can look more objectively at the images, and the keepers become apparent to me. However, I often see a smaller area in one or more of the images that now excites me more than any of the ones I shot. My emotional distance from the scene, coupled with consolidation of my thinking about the scene, allows me to see the scene differently. Often, then, a cropping to get a creative effect does just what I want for the image--unfortunately at the cost of some resolution--but the impact of the image is higher, regardless.
Should I have "seen" this fresher version and filled the frame with it to start with? Hindsight might suggest "yes," but I don't feel I have to apologize for the way my creative process works any more than one could say Beethoven should have been able to come up with his final version of each measure as rapidly as did Handel.
No, I am not comparing my photography skills to Handel's or Beethoven's compositional genuis; just trying to make a point.
Let the flaming begin!
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Walter,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Another point to consider is the capability with digital of composing by stitching together multiple frames seamlessly to create an image not only wider than any lens could create but also create an image with a geometry far different from what we see or what a single lens sees. In that case cropping becomes not only a requirement but an integral part of the process since there will always be "bits" that are unecessary. In addition I also stretch, warp, clone and more in order to complete the composition and make the image look the way I want it to look.
This process is closer to painting than to the traditional photography approach. In painting, the composition is arrived at over time, by adding, removing and modifying elements, light, colors and contrast. In traditional photography, epitomized by HCBs approach, composition is arrived at instantly.
Here's an example of what I am describing. Although not apparent when looking at this image, the little tree, or bush, to the far right was actually almost behind me. The use of a linear projection when stitching the eight Phase One P45 photographs resulted in the bush being to my right. Also, the 4 sky photographs were taken 20 minutes after the 4 land photographs. I took multiple series of 8 photographs, over a 1hr span of time. When it came to making a final choice I liked how the land looked early on and how the sky looked later on.
As a point of reference in regards to how wide this scene is, an 18mm lens on a full-frame 35mm would encompass slightly more than the width of the river bend (the Horseshoe shape of the river going around the central butte), from left to right. As it is this scene shows over 160 degrees of view since, as I mentioned, part of the scene on the right and left were located almost behind me.
(http://beautiful-landscape.com/New%20Site.data/2009%20Images/Horseshoe-collage-600.jpg)
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I have only one thing to say on this topic:
Cropping is sub-optimal ... but then again, almost everything is sub-optimal ... and sub-optimal is usually more than acceptable.
I crop all the time - and not JUST to get the squares and 4x5's that typically please my eye and creative vision more than 2x3.
While I HATE to lose resolution, most of my post-crop images have more than enough resolution to suit my needs ... if they don't, they either get tossed or printed small.
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Walter,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Another point to consider is the capability with digital of composing by stitching together multiple frames seamlessly to create an image not only wider than any lens could create but also create an image with a geometry far different from what we see or what a single lens sees. In that case cropping becomes not only a requirement but an integral part of the process since there will always be "bits" that are unecessary. In addition I also stretch, warp, clone and more in order to complete the composition and make the image look the way I want it to look.
This process is closer to painting than to the traditional photography approach. In painting, the composition is arrived at over time, by adding, removing and modifying elements, light, colors and contrast. In traditional photography, epitomized by HCBs approach, composition is arrived at instantly.
(http://beautiful-landscape.com/New%20Site.data/2009%20Images/Horseshoe-collage-600.jpg)
A beautiful image, Alain, and I have enjoyed your articles on how you developed your techniques and views of aesthetics. I don't hold any aspect of photography sacred, and I feel that any alteration that brings the final image into line with the "reality" that I saw in my head is valid, provided it is done well enough so as not to leap out of the picture to point attention to itself. And then, only because it wrecks the effect I was trying for.
As far as perspective in an image, sometimes I use a warp or free transform, pulling on a corner or side, rather than a crop; this can distort perspective in an "unnatural" way, but can emphasize some quality I would like to bring out of an image. Most observers respond favorably to the images but if I explain what I did, some dismiss it as dishonest, or not even photography. I make no claim to be representing any reality other than that of my mind's eye. And I have fun doing this.
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Walter,
Thank you for your compliments on my work. Stretching and other modifications are very interesting. They allow for straightening an horizon without rotating the image for example, thereby avoiding to have to crop the image after rotating it to remove the white corners. I use it often. It also allows modification of the composition by introducing curves and allowing creative distortion of the image. I use it to bring movement in an otherwise too-static image.
Alain
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There was some cropping involved in doing these - difficult to explain, but there was only one place I could stand for the capture, and so the birds were at an oblique angle. A little tug at an approx. 45 degree angle was the main trick.
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Ray, I agree with your point about resolution. On the other hand, as I'm sure you'd agree, if you're shooting something like landscape, really good resolution can help the result. On the street, though, and in most other situations, resolution is vastly overrated -- because it's something Pop Photography can measure, I'd guess. At the risk of causing Dale to have a stroke I'd point out that resolution is lousy in some of HCB's best early photographs, but they're still exceptionally fine work.
If you are worried that the resolution of your camera is a bit inadequate for the print sizes you usually make or desire to make, you should either upgrade to a bigger format camera with a higher pixel count, or stitch images.
Alain Briot makes the excellent point that stitching allows for the possibility of capturing a scene that no single shot, however wide the lens, could capture. Cropping is always essential with such a process. (I wish I'd included that point earlier in my list of reasons for cropping).
However, there is another reason for stitching. When your camera's resolution is either inadequate for the size of print you'd like to make, or bordering on inadequacy, then stitching is the way to go. It's better to have more resolution than required than 'just' enough.
If you have to take multiple shots of a scene just to be sure you don't have to sacrifice resolution in post processing (as a result of cropping), you need to either stitch or upgrade your camera. Even those who have an 8mp Canon 20D which they think is perfectly adequate for the A3 size prints they always make, could benefit from the greatly enhanced creative cropping opportunities offered by the 21mp 5D2.
As regards HCB, he's a very unusual photographer. He used a range-finder Leica with a viewfinder that shows a wider view than the area covered by the film. There's a 35mm matte in the viewfinder, isn't there? I get the impression that HCB was like a tiger watching his prey and waiting for the best moment to pounce. The 35mm matte in his viewfinder was the critical area. In a scene with movement, he could see what was happening outside of the 35mm frame. As various elements moved in and out of the frame, he would be watching carefully. If he pressed the shutter just half a second too soon or too late, he would miss the composition, as a tiger would miss its prey without perfect timing.
Resolution is of secondary concern with HCB's art form.
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..... I'd point out that resolution is lousy in some of HCB's best early photographs, but they're still exceptionally fine work.
No argument there. Art is what it is, and the man's art has a loyal audience. I've removed a lot of my early digital efforts from my active collection due to a combination of poor resolution and less than exemplary art. But there are a few of those early photos that are very satisfying today in spite of low resolution. And I think sometimes about re-shooting some of those (as I'm sure many people do their own), and let the feeling pass, since I don't feel the same inspiration that I did when I made the original. And there are other things to do anyway. I should add, OTOH, that the temptation to "improve" an existing photo is much greater with the newer material I have for a couple of reasons - one is the much greater resolution that allows some cropping, and the other is the fact that most of the newer material simply hasn't been around that long to have "stood the test of time", so it lends itself to greater experimentation.
Now I wonder if part of this has to do with whether a photo is considered to be a document of some kind, or pure art as it were. If I considered a photo of mine to be an important document, I'd be much more likely to preserve it in its clearest, most detailed form. If not, anything goes.
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There was some cropping involved in doing these - difficult to explain, but there was only one place I could stand for the capture, and so the birds were at an oblique angle. A little tug at an approx. 45 degree angle was the main trick.
Aha! The Truth emerges! (Just kidding. Besides how many people have used a tool such as Image Align to change, say, horizontal perspective distortion, or vertical skew, etc yet believe that those who tweak such things for artistic impact are less than honest?)
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Walter,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Another point to consider is the capability with digital of composing by stitching together multiple frames seamlessly to create an image not only wider than any lens could create but also create an image with a geometry far different from what we see or what a single lens sees. In that case cropping becomes not only a requirement but an integral part of the process since there will always be "bits" that are unecessary. In addition I also stretch, warp, clone and more in order to complete the composition and make the image look the way I want it to look.
This process is closer to painting than to the traditional photography approach. In painting, the composition is arrived at over time, by adding, removing and modifying elements, light, colors and contrast. In traditional photography, epitomized by HCBs approach, composition is arrived at instantly.
Alain, It's a very elegant and interesting piece of work. But as you point out, it's closer to painting than to photography. Actually, it's pretty close to computer painting. Ever since the dawn of photography painters have been procuring photographs, such as Atget's "documents pour artistes," and using them as a basis for their paintings. In most cases, with the exception of Charles Sheeler, the painters haven't attempted precise, photographic reproductions of the "documents." They've made their own interpretations, often producing works much more powerful than the original "documents." I wish we had a word for the kind of thing you've done. It belongs in a category of its own, and I'd have as hard a time calling it "photography' as I'd have calling the paintings that use photographs as their basis "photography." But it's excellent work whatever you call it.
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As regards HCB, he's a very unusual photographer. He used a range-finder Leica with a viewfinder that shows a wider view than the area covered by the film. There's a 35mm matte in the viewfinder, isn't there? I get the impression that HCB was like a tiger watching his prey and waiting for the best moment to pounce. The 35mm matte in his viewfinder was the critical area. In a scene with movement, he could see what was happening outside of the 35mm frame. As various elements moved in and out of the frame, he would be watching carefully. If he pressed the shutter just half a second too soon or too late, he would miss the composition, as a tiger would miss its prey without perfect timing.
Resolution is of secondary concern with HCB's art form.
Yes, HCB used a rangefinder, but he did the vast majority of his work with a 50mm lens. In the United States he sometimes switched to 35mm, but from what I've read, he wasn't happy about having to do that.
When you put a lens on a Leica M series camera the correct set of framelines for the focal length of the lens appears in the viewfinder. The M series contains a number of frameline sets, including 50mm and 35mm. Earlier Leicas had framelines for the 50mm "normal" lens, but if you switched to something else you had to use an auxiliary viewfinder clipped into the flash shoe. I worked for many years with Leica M's, and I also used a Leica IIIf, which preceded the M series. Unfortunately I don't remember whether or not the IIIf had any framelines other than the 50mm. If you ever do much street photography with a rangefinder, walking down the street with the camera set to f/8 or f/11 and hyperfocal distance and able simply to raise the camera and shoot, you'll have a hard time switching to anything else.
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Russ,
Thank you for your comments. I agree with you that it is a unique approach and that there isn't an accepted name for it. I'm sure it will come with time. I call it "Image Collages" or "Digital Collages." Personally, I find this approach very appealing and offering unexplored potential. A large amount of my current work is done this way. Here's another example:
(http://beautiful-landscape.com/New%20Site.data/2009%20Images/Clouds-Panorama-5-flat.jpg)
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Getting a crop wider than the original image: Priceless
Stitching sliding backs are not cheap, but certainly not priceless, and they give you two or three times the res (or more) without distortion, wasted or stretched pixels ...Very simple really, with what I would call a "pro" camera.
Or you can enlarge the pixel dimensions of the pic and clone or air brush in the blank bits.
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Stitching sliding backs are not cheap, but certainly not priceless, and they give you two or three times the res (or more) without distortion, wasted or stretched pixels ...Very simple really, with what I would call a "pro" camera.
Or you can enlarge the pixel dimensions of the pic and clone or air brush in the blank bits.
There are cases, unusual perhaps, where an image is enlarged just to make certain handwork more accurate and easier to do.
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Has anyone reading this thread changed their behavior ... based on the discussion?
Yes! I was just cropping some shots and found myself chuckling out loud. Never did that before.
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When you put a lens on a Leica M series camera the correct set of framelines for the focal length of the lens appears in the viewfinder. The M series contains a number of frameline sets, including 50mm and 35mm. Earlier Leicas had framelines for the 50mm "normal" lens, but if you switched to something else you had to use an auxiliary viewfinder clipped into the flash shoe. I worked for many years with Leica M's, and I also used a Leica IIIf, which preceded the M series. Unfortunately I don't remember whether or not the IIIf had any framelines other than the 50mm. If you ever do much street photography with a rangefinder, walking down the street with the camera set to f/8 or f/11 and hyperfocal distance and able simply to raise the camera and shoot, you'll have a hard time switching to anything else.
Russ, I started my "serious" photography with a IIIf and a 50/3.5 elmar and later added a 90/4 elmar. As far as I remember it had a "built in" 50 mm rangefinder wich had "fuzzy sides" so accurate framing was always a challenge. The distance meter with the double view which you needed to overlay was a separate opening just besides the rangefinder. So for more accurate framing (and other f/l's than 50 mm) I had a stick-on rangefinder that was adjustable from 28 to 135 mm. It didn't have a zoom but just closed "black curtains" to give you the right view. Since it was placed quite high above the lens you could adjust the angle to correct for parallax with a little handle. I can't even count how often I forgot to adjust that and had very weird framed portraits with ears or nose cut off
That's why I changed to an M2 later, it had frames for 35/50/90 mm(automatically set by the lens you mounted) and automatic parallax compenstation coupled with the distance meter and was infinitely more user friendly. Especially for 50 and 90 mm it sometimes was a help to see what was "flying in" from outside in anticipation of pressing the shutter. I love that camera and still run a roll of film through it once in a while. Just wished the M8 was more affordable, so I could use such a system digitally.
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So is stitching not considered photography then? Coming from the bastard child of art (photography) I find that rather rich, stitching is probably far closer to art than photography is. For photography to start giving itself airs and graces of pretensious purity is just amusing. Methinks the medium is taking itself far too seriously if it thinks there is any difference between skewing perspective on the computer or using a different lens. If I leave room around an image because I know I'm going to correct perspective that somehow makes my image less 'true' than using a t/s lens and cropping exactly. What pretensious nonsense. Not entering into the technical world of IQ which is in any case irrelevant to the concept being discussed but what is printed is my artists vision. How I achieved that can only possibly detract from the image if the viewer is not interested in the imagery but rather the technique. We don't respect people like that do we?
When I shot this image I had two crops in mind. I actually preferred a tighter crop without the gate but on second thoughts decided to include it so that I could choose between the two later. It's a 17 image stitch. The frame with the moving guy took an hour of waiting but once I had it I then shot the rest of the frames at my leasure. No doubt the single shot I took at the beginning to decide on the framing prior to stitching is photography - whereas this image is not eventhough it looks exactly the same but with 60 megapixels instead of 12. Oh and if I'd cropped it to match one of the framings I had envisaged while shooting that would have shown my lack of visionary skills. What a load of nonsense.
(http://www.studio-beni.net/stepmove.jpg)
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Russ, I started my "serious" photography with a IIIf and a 50/3.5 elmar and later added a 90/4 elmar. As far as I remember it had a "built in" 50 mm rangefinder wich had "fuzzy sides" so accurate framing was always a challenge. The distance meter with the double view which you needed to overlay was a separate opening just besides the rangefinder. So for more accurate framing (and other f/l's than 50 mm) I had a stick-on rangefinder that was adjustable from 28 to 135 mm. It didn't have a zoom but just closed "black curtains" to give you the right view. Since it was placed quite high above the lens you could adjust the angle to correct for parallax with a little handle. I can't even count how often I forgot to adjust that and had very weird framed portraits with ears or nose cut off
That's why I changed to an M2 later, it had frames for 35/50/90 mm(automatically set by the lens you mounted) and automatic parallax compenstation coupled with the distance meter and was infinitely more user friendly. Especially for 50 and 90 mm it sometimes was a help to see what was "flying in" from outside in anticipation of pressing the shutter. I love that camera and still run a roll of film through it once in a while. Just wished the M8 was more affordable, so I could use such a system digitally.
Pieter, One of the things I really regret is selling my M4 back in the early eighties. But I'm not going to buy a film M now just so I can get back into film. If you ever think seriously about the M8, check Rangefinder Forum and Leica User's Forum first. The M8 has some serious flaws -- one's I don't want to have to put up with. I often shoot on the street with an Epson R-D1, which takes Leica M lenses and has the same sensor as the Nikon D100. It's a fun camera to work with and still has a film advance lever. It really does feel like a Leica M -- more so than the M8 by the way.
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When I shot this image I had two crops in mind. I actually preferred a tighter crop without the gate but on second thoughts decided to include it so that I could choose between the two later. It's a 17 image stitch. The frame with the moving guy took an hour of waiting but once I had it I then shot the rest of the frames at my leasure. No doubt the single shot I took at the beginning to decide on the framing prior to stitching is photography - whereas this image is not eventhough it looks exactly the same but with 60 megapixels instead of 12. Oh and if I'd cropped it to match one of the framings I had envisaged while shooting that would have shown my lack of visionary skills. What a load of nonsense.
Seems like an awful lot of work for the result.
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Seems like an awful lot of work for the result.
It is the only image in this thread that I like.
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It is the only image in this thread that I like.
I like it too. It looks like a well-composed street shot, the kind of thing you raise your camera and shoot when you see it developing. My question is, why not simply wait until you see someone walking by and then shoot?
What Alain is doing with landscape actually requires a lot of post-processing work, but I question whether or not street photography requires it. It's a different kind of thing altogether. What Ben's complaining about is that he thinks I refused to call his stitching operation "photography." In the case of his composited street shot, that's not true, any more than I refuse to call HDR photography, which I sometimes do, "photography."
In Alain's case, even though the source material is photography, the result isn't something I can call photography any more than I can call one of Charles Sheeler's photographic paintings, copied from a photograph, a photograph. Sheeler's source material was photography but his result was painting. What I'd like to see is a word that can distinguish what Alain's doing from straight photography. Straight photography records and captures time. Alain's work captures the vision in his creative mind.
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I like it too. It looks like a well-composed street shot, the kind of thing you raise your camera and shoot when you see it developing. My question is, why not simply wait until you see someone walking by and then shoot?
What Alain is doing with landscape actually requires a lot of post-processing work, but I question whether or not street photography requires it. It's a different kind of thing altogether. What Ben's complaining about is that he thinks I refused to call his stitching operation "photography." In the case of his composited street shot, that's not true, any more than I refuse to call HDR photography, which I sometimes do, "photography."
In Alain's case, even though the source material is photography, the result isn't something I can call photography any more than I can call one of Charles Sheeler's photographic paintings, copied from a photograph, a photograph. Sheeler's source material was photography but his result was painting. What I'd like to see is a word that can distinguish what Alain's doing from straight photography. Straight photography records and captures time. Alain's work captures the vision in his creative mind.
I can agree with that. It has been on my mind as I've been thinking about buying one of Alain's photos. Great stuff but what exactly would I be buying?
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I can agree with that. It has been on my mind as I've been thinking about buying one of Alain's photos. Great stuff but what exactly would I be buying?
I think you will be investing in artwork that represents the outcome of my creative vision. You will also have an image that no one can ever create again due to how it was made. I don't think it is very different than a painting in that regard. I collect paintings and what I am interested in is how the artist saw and represented the subject. This is what I aim to do in my work: express how I saw and perceived the subject.
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How about just calling it 'Photographic Artwork' or 'Photographic Imagery'? To be honest I don't see any difference between the Zone system, dodging and burning and (decently done) HDR myself, one uses chemicals the other uses computers. The results look the same though if properly done. The only people who care how you got there are the ones who miss the point. The only important thing is whether the final image achieves its required purpose. If it does than to degenerate it due to how it was made is pathetic. If it doesn't than who cares how pure the photographic purpose was?
If the powers that be do not want to accept the terms I employed above then I'll simply call it 'Artistic Representations' and screw the word photography. Personally I don't believe it brings anything to the table anyway other than false snobbishness.
My images have the resolution and imaging size to give big prints with incredible tonality. My project (link in my sig) has specifically been targeting the idea of shooting street like subjects but with a landscape type feel and level of quality. I wanted to see if my vision could be expressed but without the sacrifice in pure quality that accompanies street photography. I started with LF but gave up when I realised I couldn't get the DOF required using lenses that gave the perspective I wanted to realise, but still freeze movement or at least have control over it. Using a DSLR with a huge range of useable ISO's and more DOF has enabled me to realise the images I had in my mind. Incorporating human subjects in stitched images of 10-17 frames has been a challenge that I've enjoyed.
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How about just calling it 'Photographic Artwork' or 'Photographic Imagery'? To be honest I don't see any difference between the Zone system, dodging and burning and (decently done) HDR myself, one uses chemicals the other uses computers. The results look the same though if properly done. The only people who care how you got there are the ones who miss the point. The only important thing is whether the final image achieves its required purpose. If it does than to degenerate it due to how it was made is pathetic. If it doesn't than who cares how pure the photographic purpose was?
If the powers that be do not want to accept the terms I employed above then I'll simply call it 'Artistic Representations' and screw the word photography. Personally I don't believe it brings anything to the table anyway other than false snobbishness.
My images have the resolution and imaging size to give big prints with incredible tonality. My project (link in my sig) has specifically been targeting the idea of shooting street like subjects but with a landscape type feel and level of quality. I wanted to see if my vision could be expressed but without the sacrifice in pure quality that accompanies street photography. I started with LF but gave up when I realised I couldn't get the DOF required using lenses that gave the perspective I wanted to realise, but still freeze movement or at least have control over it. Using a DSLR with a huge range of useable ISO's and more DOF has enabled me to realise the images I had in my mind. Incorporating human subjects in stitched images of 10-17 frames has been a challenge that I've enjoyed.
Ben,
"Photographic Artwork" is fine, but "Photographic Imagery" is a tautology. I'm trying to figure out what your beef is, but I'm not succeeding. Who are these "powers that be" who want to deny you your rights?
"How you got there" is the whole point. If you're not claiming that what you shot represents reality then there's no limit to what you can do. That's where Alain stands. He's not claiming that his stitched images represent a real scene any more than Picasso claimed that "The Frugal Repast" was a representation of a real event. What he's creating is art that's closer to painting than to photography -- and he does it very well.
Street photography is a horse of a different color. A street photograph tells a story, even if the story isn't terribly understandable. Here's an example:
[attachment=13836:Confrontation.jpg]
The title I gave that picture is "Confrontation." I haven't the foggiest idea what was going on there, but it's clear that there's a story behind it. It's real. It really happened. If I'd shot a picture of a group around a table in a restaurant and then dubbed in the kid in the middle it wouldn't be street photography. I don't know what it would be, but if I called it "street photography" I'd be telling a lie. I'd be pretending the photograph is something it isn't.
There's nothing wrong with you wanting to shoot "street like subjects" at high resolution -- as long as you don't call it "street photography." Go ahead. Call it "Photographic Artwork." That's a pretty good name.
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'How you got there is the whole point'.
I think that says pretty much everything about you as an artist.
The idea that photography has ever been about representing reality is a joke. You cannot begin to substantiate that. I've never seen the real world in black and white. Or with Velvia colours, or distorted as with a super wide angle lens, or as shown with an ND grad. I don't ever remember seeing frozen blurs in the real world like in HCB's moving bike or man jumping over the puddle (sorry I don't know the real names of the images). As a photograph by definition does not show context it's ability to tell the truth is again by definition untrue. Reality is in 3D, in movement, with sound and with context. Photography is none of those and that was long before the digital era. That the distortion of reality is accomplished in photography using new methods in this century is irrelevant.
The image above looks pretty much exactly the same as the test image I took before starting the work on the stitch. Nothing changed because I stitched it except that the stairs for example were captured some seconds after the walking man. No different in fact than perhaps using a long exposure where certain elements would be captured at a different time to others.
I'm not saying that my imagery could be used to testify in court. Just like about 99% of what you actually would consider photography it is a distortion of reality. A distortion of reality is what photography is. To pretend otherwise is to wear blinkers....
Oh and I never said I was shooting street photography. 'Street like' was the phrase I used.
You are defining photography by a set of rules that the medium itself can not begin to aspire to.
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You are defining photography by a set of rules that the medium itself can not begin to aspire to.
...To me the question is, "Why would it want to?" How can binding the medium with rules and definitions help the artist make images... or help the viewer see them?
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'How you got there is the whole point'.
I think that says pretty much everything about you as an artist.
The idea that photography has ever been about representing reality is a joke. You cannot begin to substantiate that. I've never seen the real world in black and white. Or with Velvia colours, or distorted as with a super wide angle lens, or as shown with an ND grad. I don't ever remember seeing frozen blurs in the real world like in HCB's moving bike or man jumping over the puddle (sorry I don't know the real names of the images). As a photograph by definition does not show context it's ability to tell the truth is again by definition untrue. Reality is in 3D, in movement, with sound and with context. Photography is none of those and that was long before the digital era. That the distortion of reality is accomplished in photography using new methods in this century is irrelevant.
The image above looks pretty much exactly the same as the test image I took before starting the work on the stitch. Nothing changed because I stitched it except that the stairs for example were captured some seconds after the walking man. No different in fact than perhaps using a long exposure where certain elements would be captured at a different time to others.
I'm not saying that my imagery could be used to testify in court. Just like about 99% of what you actually would consider photography it is a distortion of reality. A distortion of reality is what photography is. To pretend otherwise is to wear blinkers....
Oh and I never said I was shooting street photography. 'Street like' was the phrase I used.
You are defining photography by a set of rules that the medium itself can not begin to aspire to.
Ben,
You probably need to look up the meaning of the word “represent.” The first definition in the Random House Unabridged starts out: “to serve to express, designate, stand for, or denote.” In other words “represents” is not the same as “is.” Once you look up “represents” and “is” or “to be” you’ll probably understand that even though you’ve never seen the real world in black and white, black and white can represent the real world.
What we’ve called “photography” for 170 years has always attempted to represent the real world. I have a hard time calling what Alain’s doing “photography” for two reasons: (1) It doesn’t attempt to represent reality, and by calling it “photography” you warp the meaning of the word and make it less precise. And (2) It doesn’t give Alain his due. What he’s doing is something new and it deserves a new name. Beyond that I can’t see a problem with calling HDR or the kind of stitching one does to create a panorama or the kind of stitching you did in your example “photography.” They’re all attempts to represent the real world.
But when you add the word “street” to the word “photography” you’re dealing with another term that’s had a specific meaning since at least the early 1930’s. “Street photography” implies the representation of a true story. If your photographs ignore that implication they’re liable to acquire the kind of odium that taints those early pictures of the Russian revolution that no longer include Trotsky.
But you never explained who the “powers that be” are: the ones who castigate you when you make photographs the way you want to
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The idea that photography has ever been about representing reality is a joke. You cannot begin to substantiate that. I've never seen the real world in black and white. Or with Velvia colours, or distorted as with a super wide angle lens, or as shown with an ND grad. I don't ever remember seeing frozen blurs in the real world like in HCB's moving bike or man jumping over the puddle (sorry I don't know the real names of the images). As a photograph by definition does not show context it's ability to tell the truth is again by definition untrue. Reality is in 3D, in movement, with sound and with context. Photography is none of those and that was long before the digital era. That the distortion of reality is accomplished in photography using new methods in this century is irrelevant.
I understand what you are trying to say here, Pom. There are a number of ways in which the photographic image falls down in the reality test. B&W before the introduction of color was one of them. The lack of a 3-D effect is another, which is actually now being addressed for future plasma TV screens.
The flaw in your argument is that our eyes and brain also don't represent reality. In some respects, the photographic lens produces distortions that our eyes don't see, as at the edges of an ultra-wide-angle lens. However, our eyes, with necessary brain interpretation, also don't exactly represent reality. They can be tricked by all sorts of phenomena and optical illusions, sometimes in very extreme ways. Has anyone ever photographed an hallucination?
With modern digital photography, I expect my shots to be an fairly accurate representation of what I saw; no hallucinations or flying saucers; no spiritual ectoplasm and no rearrangement of the elements in the scene. If I later decide to rearrange the elements in the scene, copy and paste a few additional items, make a collage, remove a few undesirable objects or blemishes, then clearly I've altered the reality of the initial photograph. Such alteration cannot be used as an argument that the camera does not capture a very convincing representation of reality.
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If your photographs ignore that implication they’re liable to acquire the kind of odium that taints those early pictures of the Russian revolution that no longer include Trotsky.
I miss Leon too. Wasn't it peculiar that LHO was seen on the cover of Life magazine in early '64 with commie newspapers in each hand, one being pro-Stalin and the other pro-Trotsky? Like he couldn't make up his mind. Or do we have a problem of journalistic integrity - somebody diddling with the photos?
That's where art solves the problem very neatly - you don't have to split hairs about reality, you just appreciate what's there.
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I miss Leon too. Wasn't it peculiar that LHO was seen on the cover of Life magazine in early '64 with commie newspapers in each hand, one being pro-Stalin and the other pro-Trotsky? Like he couldn't make up his mind. Or do we have a problem of journalistic integrity - somebody diddling with the photos?
That's where art solves the problem very neatly - you don't have to split hairs about reality, you just appreciate what's there.
You're right, Dale. I should have substituted "street shots" for "photographs" in that sentence.
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What we’ve called “photography” for 170 years has always attempted to represent the real world.
I'm sorry, but that statement is simply not true and borders on absurd. Many of the serious early, and mid, practitioners were primarily interested in conceptual photography with little, or no, interest in the real world. Subjects ran the gamut from Biblical stories (Mother Mary, last supper) to simple, romanticized altered depictions of normal life to contrived and created battle scenes. Heck, many of these photos were comprised of multiple sheets/plates, some containing more than a dozen. How about the pictorialist movement, alive and well for more than 100 years? To that group, "real world" is the antithesis of what they stand for.
Thus, this notion that photography has had, since it's invention, a singular altruistic mission is invalid. Photography, like all the arts, is about the creators and the viewers, not the processes as you would have us believe. Photography, no matter what he specific process, style or subject matter, is simply a medium used to create.
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I'm sorry, but that statement is simply not true and borders on absurd. Many of the serious early, and mid, practitioners were primarily interested in conceptual photography with little, or no, interest in the real world. Subjects ran the gamut from Biblical stories (Mother Mary, last supper) to simple, romanticized altered depictions of normal life to contrived and created battle scenes. Heck, many of these photos were comprised of multiple sheets/plates, some containing more than a dozen. How about the pictorialist movement, alive and well for more than 100 years? To that group, "real world" is the antithesis of what they stand for.
Thus, this notion that photography has had, since it's invention, a singular altruistic mission is invalid. Photography, like all the arts, is about the creators and the viewers, not the processes as you would have us believe. Photography, no matter what he specific process, style or subject matter, is simply a medium used to create.
Chuck, I'll certainly concede that Henry Peach Robinson didn't do street photography and that "Fading Away" used five negatives. Nonetheless, all of these guys were attempting to portray what they saw as the real world, though, as you say, they attempted through allegory to romanticize it. I've forgotten who said it, and I haven't time at the moment to search for the actual quote, but someone once pointed out with reference to pictorial biblical stories something to the effect that you can dress the girl up and photograph her and call the photograph "Mother Mary," but it's still Miss Simpson from down the street. In the end people laughed at the pretentiousness of "Fading Away." Pictorialism may have been alive for 100 years, but "well?" I don't think so. Paul Strand was beginning to undermine it not long after the turn of the century.
Where did you get the idea that I suggested photography has an altruistic mission? I've never suggested that any particular unselfishness is involved in capturing time in a representation of reality. And where did "processes" come into the discussion?
We do agree on one point: photography is a medium used to create.
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Photography, when limited in certain ways, can be used to document "reality", but that does not mean that what one does with an image must remain within those limits to be called "photography". Where do you draw the line, then? If I burn-in a part of the image by 10% it is photography, but if I go past 10% then it is not photography, but something else? Very little of the images one sees in fashion magazines would qualify as photography by that definition.
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Chuck, I'll certainly concede that Henry Peach Robinson didn't do street photography and that "Fading Away" used five negatives. Nonetheless, all of these guys were attempting to portray what they saw as the real world, though, as you say, they attempted through allegory to romanticize it. I've forgotten who said it, and I haven't time at the moment to search for the actual quote, but someone once pointed out with reference to pictorial biblical stories something to the effect that you can dress the girl up and photograph her and call the photograph "Mother Mary," but it's still Miss Simpson from down the street. In the end people laughed at the pretentiousness of "Fading Away." Pictorialism may have been alive for 100 years, but "well?" I don't think so. Paul Strand was beginning to undermine it not long after the turn of the century.
Where did you get the idea that I suggested photography has an altruistic mission? I've never suggested that any particular unselfishness is involved in capturing time in a representation of reality. And where did "processes" come into the discussion?
We do agree on one point: photography is a medium used to create.
Russ,
While Strand (and Stieglitz) may have tried to undermine pictorialism, it's very much alive and well. Much of contemporary fine-art photography is based on the tenets of pictorialism.
As for early photographers, again, I have to disagree. Many of these folks had little interest in reality. Many were simply illustrating stories they knew either from literature or the Bible. The model may have, in reality, been a neighbor or a nanny or a friend, but in the image they lost their true identity and became who they were portraying. Consider the theatre or the movies. Is it the actual actor we are emotionally involved with, or is it the character?
I did no mean "altruistic" to be literal, but rather to emphasize your assertion (of which I strongly disagree) that photography, since its inception, has had a singular and unwavering mission to, as you put it, "represent the real world" through documentation of the human condition.
As for bringing up "process", given the previous sentence and your earlier statement that landscape photography is a cop out and landscapes are better left to painters, I could only assume that, in your view, photography is less about personal vision and more about mechanics (if you have a camera, you must shoot people). I seriously doubt that is what you really mean (you seem too intelligent to be so myoptic), but it does come across like that.
I don't totally disgree with you on everything, Russ, but do take a bit of offense at some of your assertions.
Regards,
Chuck
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Russ,
While Strand (and Stieglitz) may have tried to undermine pictorialism, it's very much alive and well. Much of contemporary fine-art photography is based on the tenets of pictorialism.
As for early photographers, again, I have to disagree. Many of these folks had little interest in reality. Many were simply illustrating stories they knew either from literature or the Bible. The model may have, in reality, been a neighbor or a nanny or a friend, but in the image they lost their true identity and became who they were portraying. Consider the theatre or the movies. Is it the actual actor we are emotionally involved with, or is it the character?
I did no mean "altruistic" to be literal, but rather to emphasize your assertion (of which I strongly disagree) that photography, since its inception, has had a singular and unwavering mission to, as you put it, "represent the real world" through documentation of the human condition.
As for bringing up "process", given the previous sentence and your earlier statement that landscape photography is a cop out and landscapes are better left to painters, I could only assume that, in your view, photography is less about personal vision and more about mechanics (if you have a camera, you must shoot people). I seriously doubt that is what you really mean (you seem too intelligent to be so myoptic), but it does come across like that.
I don't totally disgree with you on everything, Russ, but do take a bit of offense at some of your assertions.
Regards,
Chuck
Chuck – And Jonathan,
Okay. I’ll confess. I’ve deliberately overstated the case, but you can’t really get a discussion going by surrendering to the first argument that comes along. Backing away from excesses, here are some statements that illustrate where I actually stand:
My favorite kind of photography is street photography, and street photography needs to be straight photography.
I think people, and the things they create, are infinitely more interesting than anything else out there.
I do think that landscape is better left to painters, but occasionally I do landscape.
I really, really dislike the kind of pictorialism that was done early in the century, and I agree that much of contemporary fine art photography is based on pictorialism, which is one reason to dislike much of contemporary fine art photography. But I do fine art photography and sell it through local galleries and on the web. I guess I’d have to admit that my fine art photography isn’t contemporary. I occasionally sell street photography, but mostly I sell pictures of dying towns and abandoned farms and mine structures. I’m into wabi sabi in a big way. Is street photography “fine art photography?” If you’re in doubt, walk into a couple of the fine art photography galleries in Santa Fe and look around. I’ll shamefacedly have to admit that my most recent sale is the “landscape” I’ve attached. It’s HDR from 9 exposures.
[attachment=13906:Palatlakaha.jpg]
I absolutely do think that photography is at its best when it represents the real world. But it’s possible to represent the real world in many different ways. There have been some arguments in this thread about whether or not photography captures time. Yes it does. It always does. When Ansel Adams captured “Moonrise Hernandez” his photograph represented the real world. How many of you have seen the real world scene he captured in Moonrise Hernandez? You won't be able to because you can’t turn back time.
Now, let’s look at burning and dodging, Jonathan’s beef. Ansel did a whole lot of burning and dodging for his final print of “Moonrise,” and then he came back later and did a whole lot more burning and dodging for later prints, all somewhat different from the first print. When you snap a picture, the result rarely is what you actually saw. It frequently takes at least some post-processing to reproduce your vision. What Ansel did with his burning and dodging was to emphasize the things that were important to his vision and deemphasize things that were less important so that the important things stand out. I don’t see any problem with that. I do it all the time with layers and masks. But when Gene Smith, most of whose work I greatly admire, dubbed in the tools in the lower right corner of his picture of Albert Schweitzer on the cover of Let Truth be the Prejudice, he went too far. That wasn’t reality. That was an attempt to make a political statement.
On the other hand, though I’m very much against manipulated prints that pretend to represent reality, I’m in favor of the kind of thing Alain’s doing. He doesn’t pretend it’s reality, and it’s something new and often very beautiful. I’d hope to see more of it and I’d hope to see it become an accepted artform.
Cropping sometimes is necessary – usually when something gets in the way and you have to remove it. A reasonable amount of cropping is legitimate when you can’t get close enough to the scene you want, or, say the scene needs to be square and you’re shooting at a 2 x 3 aspect ratio, but most habitual croppers carry cropping to the point where the print falls apart and becomes soft or pixilated. To me the most important reason not to crop is that, as HCB said, if the geometrically correct interplay of proportions isn’t there in what you see through the viewfinder at the moment you trip the shutter, it’s bloody unlikely you’ll be able to recover or create that interplay by cropping. I also think that once you’ve developed your eye, even though you move around for additional shots your first impression of the thing you’re shooting almost always is the right one.
Finally, let’s address the semantic problem that’s been causing all the outrage: If you pick up a brush, dip it in paint, and swipe it across a canvas, what you have is a “painting.” If you pick up a camera, point it at the wall and trip the shutter, what you have is a “photograph.” But I doubt any of us would call that canvas a “painting,” and I doubt any of us would call that file in the camera a “photograph.” (Though you might if you're really into "modern art.) It may be that I’ve pushed my own idea of what’s actually a “photograph” a bit too far in this thread, but I got some pretty interesting responses so I’m not going to apologize.
Best regards to all of you,
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If you pick up a brush, dip it in paint, and swipe it across a canvas, what you have is a “painting.” If you pick up a camera, point it at the wall and trip the shutter, what you have is a “photograph.” But I doubt any of us would call that canvas a “painting,” and I doubt any of us would call that file in the camera a “photograph.”
No offense, but to me that makes no sense whatsoever.
I paint and I photograph. If I pick up my brush, dip it in paint and swipe it across a canvas, I have created a painting. I and my fellow painters would call the canvas a painting. If I pick up my camera, point it at a wall and trip the shutter, the file or film in the camera is a "photograph," and would be called so.
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No offense, but to me that makes no sense whatsoever.
I paint and I photograph. If I pick up my brush, dip it in paint and swipe it across a canvas, I have created a painting. I and my fellow painters would call the canvas a painting. If I pick up my camera, point it at a wall and trip the shutter, the file or film in the camera is a "photograph," and would be called so.
Quite true! Whether or not the painting or the photograph of the wall is interesting or meaningful is always a matter of opinion. Someone who views the print of the brick wall might be obsessed with bricks and their different styles and textures and might think, 'Wow! I've never seen that type of brick before. Look at the texture and the subtle coloring and shading. That's the most beautiful brick-work I've ever seen!'
On the other hand, someone who's into abstract painting and who thinks Jackson Pollack is the greatest, might view that swipe across the canvas as very meaningful in a personal way.
If we step back from the emotional and personal appeal that a painting or photograph may have, we should be able to see clearly that the camera is the master when it comes to accurate portrayal of what the eye sees. However interesting or uninteresting the casual shot of the wall may be, it would take a whole school of Chinese painters with magnifying glasses and fine-haired brushes to even emulate the grain and fine texture of the brick wall.
That the camera is supreme in its ability to capture and represent reality is so obvious, I can't understand why we are having this discussion.
Okay! On second thoughts, I can. Because it has always been possible to maipulate photographic images (even in the wet darkroom) to suit an artistic taste, then we can use the false logic that the photograph does not represent reality. This is merely a tautology. If I alter the reality of a photograph, then the photograph shows an altered reality. That's pretty obvious, isn't it? .
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No offense, but to me that makes no sense whatsoever.
I paint and I photograph. If I pick up my brush, dip it in paint and swipe it across a canvas, I have created a painting. I and my fellow painters would call the canvas a painting. If I pick up my camera, point it at a wall and trip the shutter, the file or film in the camera is a "photograph," and would be called so.
Sounds as if you could be a very successful "modern art" critic.
How about the guy down the street painting his house. Is the house a "painting?"
Quite a few years ago I entered a couple woodcuts in a show at our local museum. I didn't really expect to win an award in my class, and my expectations were fulfilled, but the "best of show" winner was an installation of three blank canvases. In your estimation is a blank canvas a "painting?"
By the way, I think I've seen several of your "photographs" of walls in fine art photography magazines.
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Someone who views the print of the brick wall might be obsessed with bricks and their different styles and textures and might think, 'Wow! I've never seen that type of brick before. Look at the texture and the subtle coloring and shading. That's the most beautiful brick-work I've ever seen!'
On the other hand, someone who's into abstract painting and who thinks Jackson Pollack is the greatest, might view that swipe across the canvas as very meaningful in a personal way.
Come on, you guys. At some point I've got to stop ROTFL and go shoot some pictures.
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Come on, you guys. At some point I've got to stop ROTFL and go shoot some pictures.
That's the way I feel about a lot of modern art.
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Cropping after the event. Perhaps there should have been a health warning along with the thread...
Anyway, if I may return to my last post where I chat about the pleasure I am getting from old shots revisited, I feel obliged to defend myself against Jonathan´s suggestion that it constitutes failure to see something better during the actual shooting of the image.
I have no idea how Jonathan works, nor, for that matter, even how many other folks shooting girls do it. My technique was relatively simple and depended mainly upon two things: was it tripod based and with slow film (Kodachrome 64 Pro) or hand-held with faster black/white? Do NOT take that as meaning there was never a cross-over of the two.
The stuff to which I referred was Kodachrome. The technique was to find a good shape and make small changes within that, mainly of facial expression and thus enable a wide choice of emotional feeling within a simple composition. When you are doing that, you do NOT suddenly abandon what you are about and make a new decision to swap lenses and go close-up, at least not until you have finished the natural run of where that first set-up is taking you. You instinctively know when you have shot it all. Then, if you saw something else, you either go for it anew or you simply do something quite else - visual memory doesn´t last all that long in the middle of a creative burst! Extrapolate at your own moral risk.
So no, I don´t accept that finding something else in a shot means that the original one failed, nor that it is inferior. After all, the elements later singled out for attention because they seem extra nice were there all along, adding to the original, don´t forget! Cropping in this way just gives them a separate lease of life/identity.
I think somebody suggested shooting girls on the beach can be classified along with studio work... Hey Soos, as they might say in Mexico but do say in Spain!
Rob C
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I cannot resist resurrecting this two month old thread.
I've worked with jazz musicians for years, and one of the things I've noticed is that the level of inspiration in the music is the greatest for improvised music. The real genius happens in the moment.
I use this example to emphasize the aspect of performance in photography. The photographer and the very act of taking the photograph are inextricably tied in with the semantic -- and thus artistic -- content of the photograph. A portrait, for example, is in large part about the relationship between the subject and the photographer. Something important is consolidated in how the photograph was taken and the process that culminated in just that photograph being taken.
A photograph is no more a collection of pixels than a dollar bill is just an exacting series of inscriptions on paper. Something identical to a dollar bill is not a dollar bill. What makes a dollar bill a dollar bill is in how it came to be, in conjunction with the various institutions that produce and consume it.
As with the jazz musician, in the best of circumstances, it may take considerable time and effort at a later date to understand and appreciate everything you knew to be the case when you took the photograph.