How often and how much do you crop?

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all. Cartier-Bresson hid his camera behind a handkerchief in his hands, and it was said that he could get it to his eye, take a picture, and hide it again before most people even noticed what he was doing.'

In other words, precise framing in the camera wasn't their greatest priority. Which runs somewhat counter to all those people who obsess about 'getting it right in the camera'. For many great photographers, cropping, either radically or as fine adjustment, has always been part of the creative process. Personally I enjoy it - many photos are improved that way. Plus ... there's nothing sacrosanct about particular aspect ratios. They are just accidents of history.

How much time and concentration do you give to cropping before you post images online or have them printed?

Now that I shoot 36mpx I crop whenever I want to

And still end up with enough pixels to make a large print.

I do try to get it right in camera if I have my eye to the viewfinder that is.

But knowing I can crop (a lot) is a great thing.

Mark_A

Mark_A wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all. Cartier-Bresson hid his camera behind a handkerchief in his hands, and it was said that he could get it to his eye, take a picture, and hide it again before most people even noticed what he was doing.'

In other words, precise framing in the camera wasn't their greatest priority. Which runs somewhat counter to all those people who obsess about 'getting it right in the camera'. For many great photographers, cropping, either radically or as fine adjustment, has always been part of the creative process. Personally I enjoy it - many photos are improved that way. Plus ... there's nothing sacrosanct about particular aspect ratios. They are just accidents of history.

How much time and concentration do you give to cropping before you post images online or have them printed?

Now that I shoot 36mpx I crop whenever I want to

And still end up with enough pixels to make a large print.

I do try to get it right in camera if I have my eye to the viewfinder that is.

But knowing I can crop (a lot) is a great thing.

Mark_A

When I shot Nikon D1 with 3 mpix  I could crop whenever I want to. No issues with 16x20 prints.   That just the nature of digital photography.

All the time and a lot. In in promptu showts, there's a hard limit as they may have slight blur or missfocus, etc. thus you have to frame correctly.

I usually frame meticulously while capturing the scene, so I rarely crop. Sometimes I crop to change the aspect ratio, sometime to level the horizon.

Ulm, Germany. Not cropped.

Esslingen, Germany. Not cropped.

I don't know why I do this way, probably because I don't like to spend time at the computer.

Some have mentioned making several crops from the same file. I do that sometimes.

Here, Pelicans on a lake.

Original

1st crop

Vertical crop

grsnovi wrote:

I usually end up cropping 99% of the time - it's rare that a SOOC image ends up not being tweaked.

Sometimes (with the 7R3) the crop can be quite severe yet the image still retains IQ.

Same here. I often find pictures within pictures.

In addition, i adjust exposure and other parameters only AFTER I crop.

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

A friend taught me to always consider cropping -- we'd do the hand-crop thing on our (film) prints and see if the photo could be improved with a little tightening. Many could.

So while I always consider it, I find I do it a lot less often in digital now that I use a mirrorless camera, thanks to the WYSIWYG viewfinder. And since it's digital, I can try a couple different "crops" by zooming. Still, working in post I find, as I did in the film days, that many shots can benefit from being tightened up a bit.

With film, which makes up the majority of my shooting these days, I will often do a little bit of cropping, as I use primarily SLRs and the film sometimes captures more than what's in the viewfinder.

Aaron

Marek M wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

Maybe you don't quite understand the culture of the American mid-20th century. Street photography is very culturally specific.

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

Maybe you don't quite understand the culture of the American mid-20th century. Street photography is very culturally specific.

I thought the subject was photography, the art of it, not American mid-20th century culture.

In that culture, you can take good or bad pictures to reflect it. Bad picture of an engaging  culture does not make the picture good.

Chaotic, accidental street picture, despite its subject, can remain bad photography.

Now hearing that Winograd did not even look through viewfinder provides an answer for chaos and lousy pictures.

-- hide signature --

Charles Darwin: "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
tony

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all. Cartier-Bresson hid his camera behind a handkerchief in his hands, and it was said that he could get it to his eye, take a picture, and hide it again before most people even noticed what he was doing.'

In other words, precise framing in the camera wasn't their greatest priority. Which runs somewhat counter to all those people who obsess about 'getting it right in the camera'. For many great photographers, cropping, either radically or as fine adjustment, has always been part of the creative process. Personally I enjoy it - many photos are improved that way. Plus ... there's nothing sacrosanct about particular aspect ratios. They are just accidents of history.

How much time and concentration do you give to cropping before you post images online or have them printed?

Very little cropping unless I might want something as a square.

Its an old habit from using film in the 80`s and sometimes using drug stores for cheap quick color prints.

Marek M wrote:

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

Maybe you don't quite understand the culture of the American mid-20th century. Street photography is very culturally specific.

I thought the subject was photography, the art of it, not American mid-20th century culture

Indeed the subject was about photography and it's art. I just followed your diversion to Winograd

In that culture, you can take good or bad pictures to reflect it. Bad picture of an engaging culture does not make the picture good.

Chaotic, accidental street picture, despite its subject, can remain bad photography.

Now hearing that Winograd did not even look through viewfinder provides an answer for chaos and lousy pictures.

Winogrand was not chaotic nor lousy in fact it was very appropriate for the culture of the day and location. Very different from street photography from Russia, France, Germany, Japan, etc. for the same period of history.

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

Maybe you don't quite understand the culture of the American mid-20th century. Street photography is very culturally specific.

I thought the subject was photography, the art of it, not American mid-20th century culture

Indeed the subject was about photography and it's art.

In that culture, you can take good or bad pictures to reflect it. Bad picture of an engaging culture does not make the picture good.

Chaotic, accidental street picture, despite its subject, can remain bad photography.

Now hearing that Winograd did not even look through viewfinder provides an answer for chaos and lousy pictures.

Winogrand's was not chaotic nor lousy in fact it was very appropriate for the culture of the day and location. Very different from street photography from Russia, France, Germany, Japan, etc. for the same period of history.

The very fact, admission, that Winograd did not even see what s in a viewfinder, that his strength was volume, speaks some of his art.

I have similar opinion of Warhol, but that is deviating from this thread.

Quite apparently we have different opinions on Winograd as artist. You know mine, I know yours. I see no problem there.

Marek M wrote:

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

tony field wrote:

Marek M wrote:

timo wrote:

A quote from one of Mike Johnston's recent posts on his excellent The Online Photographer website, talking about viewfinders:

'Winogrand often barely looks through his viewfinder at all.

No wonder his pictures are so lousy. I cannot understand reasons for his fame.

Maybe you don't quite understand the culture of the American mid-20th century. Street photography is very culturally specific.

I thought the subject was photography, the art of it, not American mid-20th century culture

Indeed the subject was about photography and it's art.

In that culture, you can take good or bad pictures to reflect it. Bad picture of an engaging culture does not make the picture good.

Chaotic, accidental street picture, despite its subject, can remain bad photography.

Now hearing that Winograd did not even look through viewfinder provides an answer for chaos and lousy pictures.

Winogrand's was not chaotic nor lousy in fact it was very appropriate for the culture of the day and location. Very different from street photography from Russia, France, Germany, Japan, etc. for the same period of history.

The very fact, admission, that Winograd did not even see what s in a viewfinder, that his strength was volume, speaks some of his art.

All it does is show he can use different ways of framing an image on occasion.

I have similar opinion of Warhol, but that is deviating from this thread.

Quite apparently we have different opinions on Winograd as artist. You know mine, I know yours. I see no problem there.