Thanks for taking the time to respond Maggie. The links that I posted are kind of an introduction to the ideas that I’m putting forward regarding lighting , cropping and printing. Yes, it is evident that I did lose some of the elements in the scene when I chose to crop the “Old Wine” image as I did. But that is due to the crop’s size not the geometric shape chosen.
This is a key point of my proposition and you’re sharp eyed to pick up on it. The camera sensor is a rectangle and to that extent it crops our image for us in the beginning but that is where ” outside” control ends and artist control begins. If we allow the printer guy (in my case printer gal) to control the canvas wrap on the picture’s edges then that is where the photographer’s control ends and outside control of the art takes over again. She tells me: “Don’t ever crop your image, I’ll do that before printing it to get the correct wrap.” I say: “No.” , “ I’ll do the wrap and you print the whole image as I give it to you.”
Now back to your question: At the “select polygon” –>“size” step in GIMP (because that’s what I use) I choose the crop size and then scale it from there. I chose to scale it as you see it. Could have included more or less of the picture but that was not determined by polygon shape but scaled size of crop. As you may have seen, following the links, many of my prints on canvas are hexagons, octagons and recently pentagons. These I try to crop to size without losing any elements of the still-life. But that would apply to rectangles also. The 12 sided one you refer to was intended to be small (12 inches across) so I cropped it tight and lost the old cork screw.
Having applied some thought to this geometric cropping idea you will have realized that this now frees us up, those who do camera work , to quite easily make framed fine art that the painters don’t often do. Your beautiful pictures, which I’ve looked at, can now be designed to compliment the architectural features of the rooms in which they will be displayed. A vaulted ceilinged living room may need a pentagon shaped fine art piece with the point of the shield up to mimic the wall shape on which it is hung. I’ll soon post a picture of an octagon print on canvas with wine bottle and wine glass etc. hung in a winery room which has an octagon recess and fan in the ceiling. The art speaks to the architecture as has not perhaps been done before and it is not difficult to accomplish now that printers can print our work on canvas and we can design and build the piece ourselves. (In my experience some printers would rather print a square over-sized image and let the artist build a geometric frame to fit. Don’t fall for this, the frame size will be very difficult to determine as it is now the crop mechanism and will be an unsatisfactory one for sure.) Geometric images printed with flip tabs are easy to measure for correct side length.
http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/how-i-took/196000-printing-framing-canvas.html
As to lighting my work , it’s another story and raises a fair amount of objection from photographers so I don’t get into it much anymore except to say it’s unconventional.
I hope I haven’t tired you out with too much detail.
Cordially,
Frank
