Eden Photographers Club Meeting - Tuesday, January 17th @ 7 pm EST (Topic: Cropping)

Welcome to the 11th meeting of the Eden Photographers Club! I hope everyone had a good month of thinking about photography and looking at the world through a photographer’s eyes. I want to thank all of you who are here tonight. Winter is upon us, and for many of us, the first real snows of the season are upon us. This is a wonderful time to get out there and photograph winter's splendor.

This meeting will focus cropping. Cropping is very much like composition that takes into effect framing and the rule of thirds, but it is done after the photo is taken. In some respects, this is a very straight-forward procedure, but in other respects it requires a bit more thought.

Before we get started, is there anything anybody wanted to bring up about photography or the club? And if anyone was planning on asking about the calendar, I regrettably have nothing to tell you; I simply don't have any idea what's going on. less

One can take a photograph with knowledge that it will need to be cropped afterwards and one can take a photograph and only after taking it realize it needs cropped (rescue cropping). I'll discuss the former in this post.

There are many reasons why one might wish to take a photo knowing it will be cropped later. For one thing, nearly every camera takes photos that are rectangular and usually at something like a 3:2 ratio. If that is the shape you want your final photo to be, then you're in luck. If not, you will need to crop. For me, the most common shapes I need my finished photos to be in besides a 3:2 rectangle is a square, and an elongated rectangle that can be used as a banner or border. Cropping is also necessary if I know beforehand that I want the photo to fit into a particular picture frame that is not also at a 3:2 ratio. When I need a photo of any of these sizes, I compose my photo knowing that there will be elements that will be cropped out, so I frame and apply the Rule of Thirds accordingly. In other words, I imagine the final image as I'm taking the photo rather than looking at the whole 3:2 rectangle.



In this photo, although what I was trying to do didn't quite work out (getting the color of the field of flowers in the background to show up in the water droplets), my goal all along was to crop out the space above and below the dew-covered grass and have a long, thin photo. Obviously I didn't go through that effort because the color from the flowers didn't end up in the droplets, but I'm sure you can see where I was going. less

Another reason one might take a photo that will be cropped later is if there is simply no way to get a distracting feature out of the frame. There are simply times when no matter the orientation angle, or lens you try, something is in the photo that you can't get out of the frame and still get your subject in it. For me, this most frequently occurs on viewing decks for some natural wonder where the orientation and angle options are limited. In this case, compose the photo so that you place the distracting element opposite your subject so you can cut the distracting element out without taking anything away from your subject. Then, crop out what you don't want.



In this photo, I was in a viewing pad photographing this canyon. No matter how I oriented myself, I just couldn't keep the handrail from getting into my photo. So, all I did was say "Fuck it" keep the handrail in the photo, and crop it out when I got home. less

Another reason one might take a photo that will be cropped later is if there is simply no way to get a distracting feature out of the frame. There are simply times when no matter the orientation angle, or lens you try, something is in the photo that you can't get out of the frame and still get your subject in it. For me, this most frequently occurs on viewing decks for some natural wonder where the orientation and angle options are limited. In this case, compose the photo so that you place the distracting element opposite your subject so you can cut the distracting element out without taking anything away from your subject. Then, crop out what you don't want.



In this photo, I was in a viewing pad photographing this canyon. No matter how I oriented myself, I just couldn't keep the handrail from getting into my photo. So, all I did was say "Fuck it" keep the handrail in the photo, and crop it out when I got home. less

Another reason one might take a photo that will be cropped later is if there is simply no way to get a distracting feature out of the frame. There are simply times when no matter the orientation angle, or lens you try, something is in the photo that you can't get out of the frame and still get your subject in it. For me, this most frequently occurs on viewing decks for some natural wonder where the orientation and angle options are limited. In this case, compose the photo so that you place the distracting element opposite your subject so you can cut the distracting element out without taking anything away from your subject. Then, crop out what you don't want.



In this photo, I was in a viewing pad photographing this canyon. No matter how I oriented myself, I just couldn't keep the handrail from getting into my photo. So, all I did was say "Fuck it" keep the handrail in the photo, and crop it out when I got home. less