How often do you crop?

I've been following this thread and promoting my 'croppy' propensity for a few days now. No one has mentioned slides. I'm talking about film slides which for many older photographers was the only way to really afford color.

When you shot a slide, that was it. The format was predetermined by the sensor dimensions and whatever you saw through the viewfinder ended up being shown on a screen - no cropping involved or even though of. You had to concentrate on composition big-time before you pulled the trigger or you ended up with garbage. Of course some folks went so far as to crop their slides using tape, but that wasn't the general practice for most photographers.

With the advent of digital cameras, PS, and the inkjet printer, everything changed. Folks who came from the age of B&W film printing (or color if you could afford it) and the chemical darkroom felt right at home with enlarging and cropping in the digital world. Not so for the slide enthusiasts who never had the option of PP cropping in the first place (unless they made color inter-negatives for print.)

I shot both color slides and B&W for prints. I got used to the restrictions of slides and loved the creative freedom of cropping and printing my B&W images.

It seems to me ridiculous to assume that those of us who advocate PP cropping are somehow diminished as photographers. Whether you crop in post or crop in the viewfinder, you're still making artistic decisions about composition and presentation. If you don't want to do any post cropping,  then you're just hobbling yourself.

I compose in the viewfinder with the knowledge that I'm eventually going to want to print the image, and that means I'm always cognizant of aspect ratio and paper and frame limitations.  In PP, I then have the freedom to improve upon my viewfinder decisions and not condemn every shot that wasn't perfectly composed in the first place.