A Piece of Crop
I don't know enough about film to know all of the advantages of digital photography. I suspect one of the benefits of digital is the ability to quickly crop an image into any aspect ratio you want. Sometimes I take a picture knowing that I am going to crop out a small portion of it. In fact, because there is no such print size as 4x3, I rarely take a photo with the intention of using every pixel.
Unfortunately, I think that this ability to crop can lead to laziness. If I'm not consciously envisioning the final product, I have a tendency to include way too much in the original photo. Often, however, even if I carefully frame my subject at the time of taking the photograph, I don't like the final product anyway. The great thing is that every once in a while I can still take a small portion of the image and use it.
This photo originally had mountains and a ship in the background, and it sucked. It was too busy so I cut out the competing objects and was left with just the wave hitting the rock. I like this version much better than what I had intended when I took the picture in the first place.
Canon PowerShot S2 IS, 32mm, f/8.0, 1/160 sec, ISO 50
posted by Bethany at 10:49 AM
11 Comments:
For me the best advantage is the capacity to manage your image of A to Z.
It was impossible before doing that. too much expensive for the no pro.
Love it how you captured the moment when the wave breaks at the rocks.
I crop my photos every once in a while. I don't think its a bad thing. I like this image.
Sorry I missed your last post- it is really nice. I guess simple CAN be good :)
~K
These last three images have been outstanding. Your effort to simplify and take the time before you shoot is really showing in your work.
It's funny because today I dragged out and dusted out the old Minolta XD-5 film camera (ancient). I had to really try and remember how to use it and I don't think it was until the last few shots out of 24 that I might have gotten it right. Now I just have to hope the camera itself was operating correctly. (It doesn't even have auto focus so hopefully my less than perfect eyes managed to get things in focus.)
Anyway, I had to be quite mindful of my framing since I no longer have my own darkroom, and the prints are at the mercy of the lab. I will, however, have the lab put them on a disk for me and then I can adjust them the way I like including cropping them, perhaps. I've never had film put to disk so we'll see.
My point is, digital does give freedom to salvage a shot that perhaps would be otherwise lost in film (if you don't process it yourself and depend on a lab). I used to crop my film images when I processed them in my basement. My dad used all sorts of techniques for processing the final prints, I never got around to learning them all, unfortunately.
I love the way your shot turned out, I would still love to see the original, I think it sounded like a good shot from you description.
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Very simple yet an powerful image, great shot!
Thanks for your comment on Something. A fine framing here. And an interesting subject of discussion. In an other part of my life, I am a painter, and I use regularly parts and fragments of a first work to enlarge them or work them in an other way...Necessary to create most than the first view...
Very cool shot : cropped well but it looks small on your blog so its a bit wierd.GREAT SHOT!
A nice job of cropping...it looks great this way.
Liking the final crop you chose Timmybomb. True, cropping does change the character of an image often drastically (before: http://petra.shutterchance.com/photoblog/3066.htm , and after http://petra.shutterchance.com/photoblog/3220.htm)
But at the same time don't forget you're also throwing out valuable pixels; reducing the overall size (and quality) of any printing you may want to do.
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