Cropping

A fellow photographer and I recently debated the relative merits of two types of cropping. (1) cropping an image during a shoot by zooming in with your lens and (2) cropping during the postproduction process. As we know, using your camera’s zoom changes your focal length and gives you a closer look at an image resulting in a creative perspective of the image before you press the shutter button. However, the true sense of the term cropping is taking your image and trimming out portions of the photo you do not want in your frame…and that happens in postproduction using Lightroom and/or photoshop.  Thereby, what remains within the crop becomes the final total image to further edit. Does cropping degrade resolution?  It can to a slight degree; but with today’s high-resolution cameras, you can do some significant cropping and still maintain high resolution for high-quality prints. 

One big advantage to post-production cropping is that you can compose and reframe a photo without having to go back and reshoot the photograph. When you are in the field (or in a photo studio), it is always a good idea to frame an image loosely and crop it in post-production. There are times though when you can completely visualize the end result and you want to shoot tight and avoid cropping. If this is you, you should still leave room to crop, just in case you need to straighten a crooked horizon, delete dead space or remove a distracting element from one or more edges of your photo. 

Whenever possible, you want to get the image framed exactly where you want it in the viewfinder and then allow your artistic creativity to rule during post-production. 

In the two examples below, note the before crop and post-production cropping:

Example 1 is from the Teton area along the Snake River in Wyoming:

In Example 2, from Devil’s Geden in Escalante, Utah there are two crops to get the final image:

Crop 1:

Crop 2:

Let me briefly mention “extreme cropping.”  Shoot a scene loosely, adjust any problems, such as converging verticals and finally adjust perspective to fit what you are looking for in a photo without sacrificing any critical components of the image. In the example below of extreme cropping, you see both the “before cropping” and how the “after cropping” delivers the WOW factor that can actually increase the quality and marketability of a photo.

Portion of an image of the Red Hills of the Tetons Before Cropping:

Final Image After Cropping:

Cropping can be magical in that it can balance an image, and in the above example, modify perspective and aspect ratio. Surprise yourself! Select some of your old landscape photos and experiment with what a little or a lot of cropping can do to increase the drama.