Help with cropping?

[Rachel Foster]

I apologize for flooding the forum with so many images at once, but yesterday was a GOOD day for me! This one captures my fancy, and for me has great potential. But I'm struggling mightily with the crop. Can anyone help?

Jacob Eliana: Dawn at the Muskegon Pier​

 

[Asher Kelman]

I apologize for flooding the forum with so many images at once, but yesterday was a GOOD day for me! This one captures my fancy, and for me has great potential. But I'm struggling mightily with the crop. Can anyone help?

Jacob Eliana: Dawn at the Muskegon Pier​

60 mm above the central light. This compresses the image and puts immediate attention on walking in that space as opposed to general atmospherics as is currently the case.

Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

Keep it wide?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Keep it wide?

ROTFWL! Who are you asking, Rachel? Me, I always like landscapes wide! I want to see what might be happening. It makes us superhuman to see that way, gong beyond out usual limitations.


Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

Point taken! LOL!

 

[Mike Shimwell]

Rachel,

Asher's suggested crop changes the feel of the picture completely 0- as he says - and if you follow this paath you could even take a little off the bottom as well The sides are fine as they are.

In saying this, I actually like the atmospheric version you presented - could you print the two versions and hang them for a few days to decide. which you prefer! Then tell us...

Mike

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Asher,

60 mm above the central light.

I assume by that you mean 60 mm based on the pixel count of the image as posted, considered under the 72 px/in resolution value in the file header?

That would be just about 1/3 of the image height. Is that what you mean? (Based on 72 px/in, the 520 px height of the posted image is equivalent to 183 mm.)

That would probably be different to someone editing the image at original resolution (that is, in terms of pixel dimensions, not the "resolution indicator" value, which will probably be 72 px/in in both cases, meaningless in both).

If the original image were, for example, 2080 px high, and carried the "customary" resolution indicator value, 72 px/in, then the crop you suggest would be the top 241 mm.

Thais is why it is so dangerous to speak of crops in terms of dimensions (mm or inches), or even in terms of pixels.

Much better (to avoid all the potential problems in this areas) would be to say, "I suggest you crop off the top 30%".

Just to play with you, the following images are all 400 px x 795 px. But, on the basis on which I suspect you are working, this one is 10 mm high:

This one is 22.4 mm high:

This one is 280 mm high:

And we wonder why some people don't trust accountants!

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Rachel Foster]

Here are both versions: as originally presented and with the long crop. I did the crop by eye so I don't know what percentage was cropped.

and to complicate it further....

 

[Charles L Webster]

The black & white wide crop does it for me. The square crop left too much empty space above the interesting story. The color doesn't add, it detracts.

 

[Rachel Foster]

I agree, Charles. I had mentally tossed this one out but at the last moment decided to try B&W. The color doesn't work at all.

 

[Ron Morse]

The low wide crop is by far the most interesting to me Rachel.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi, Asher,



I assume by that you mean 60 mm based on the pixel count of the image as posted, considered under the 72 px/in resolution value in the file header?

Doug,

You are funny! The compensation is that you were also smart enough to grab and keep Clara! She's a good reference point for a lot of things and I love here dearly!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

The black & white wide crop does it for me. The square crop left too much empty space above the interesting story. The color doesn't add, it detracts.

Charles,

Succinctly put. B&W allows the form to be expressed without any false distractions of color, allowing our brains to add that if necessary. B&W respects the intelligence that way. "The wide crop does it for me" too!

Asher

 

[Rachel Foster]

It's agreed!

 

[Maris Rusis]

I apologize for flooding the forum with so many images at once, but yesterday was a GOOD day for me! This one captures my fancy, and for me has great potential. But I'm struggling mightily with the crop. Can anyone help?

Jacob Eliana: Dawn at the Muskegon Pier​

Well, I've read the thread and the Rachel Foster's question still amazes me. How can anyone struggle with a crop?

Surely a photographer tries all the crops, either electronically or with L shaped pieces of paper, and selects the one that carries the original intent of the picture in the most effective way.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer had no original intent, nothing in mind. That's a good reason to put the camera aside and not take the picture in the first place.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer is insensitive to any and all permutations. That's a good reason to select more engaging subject matter.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer doesn't care about the picture itself but is more concerned about using it to beckon for audience approbation. The best crop being the one that entertains or titillates the audience the most. Pandering to audiences or bargaining with them to fashion one's own personally expressive art work is a breathtaking sell out.

The only crop that really works, the only one of interest, is the one Rachel Foster chooses because Rachel Foster chooses it! An art work accumulates worth because it is a map of the artist's mind and the way a picture is cropped is a serious component of that map.

Rachel, take a stand, you decide, its your work and plenty good enough not to need all and sundry to help you make it.

 

[Rachel Foster]

That's certainly something to think about, Maris. The reason I ask for help is that I have seen images suddenly come to life with the right crop. I know it when I see it *in someone else's work* but not in mine. I often have to let my images sit for a month or six months before I can "see" them. I've pondered on this puzzle, baffled as to why. The only reason I can think of is that the image on my screen NEVER matches what was in my mind's eye. When I am taking the photo, I'm seeing it through the lens of past experience and laden with emotions evoked by the visual and other sensory triggers. One of my biggest challenges has been to separate those things from the scene as will be captured by the camera. As I gain experience, I'm getting better at it. So, perhaps part of the answer is the relatively short time I've been at this.

"Maybe the crop fails because the photographer had no original intent, nothing in mind." Perhaps the problem is that I have too much in mind.

Thanks, Maris. You always make me think. It's appreciated.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Maris, OTOH!

Well, I've read the thread and the Rachel Foster's question still amazes me. How can anyone struggle with a crop?

Surely a photographer tries all the crops, either electronically or with L shaped pieces of paper, and selects the one that carries the original intent of the picture in the most effective way.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer had no original intent, nothing in mind. That's a good reason to put the camera aside and not take the picture in the first place.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer is insensitive to any and all permutations. That's a good reason to select more engaging subject matter.

Maybe the crop fails because the photographer doesn't care about the picture itself but is more concerned about using it to beckon for audience approbation. The best crop being the one that entertains or titillates the audience the most. Pandering to audiences or bargaining with them to fashion one's own personally expressive art work is a breathtaking sell out.

The only crop that really works, the only one of interest, is the one Rachel Foster chooses because Rachel Foster chooses it! An art work accumulates worth because it is a map of the artist's mind and the way a picture is cropped is a serious component of that map.

Rachel, take a stand, you decide, its your work and plenty good enough not to need all and sundry to help you make it.

Maris,

Every photographer should read your statement above before they take out their camera.

Having said that, being able to develop a concept that one has to successfully get into the camera and thence to paper is a challenge for most of us. It's something requiring iterative bargaining between the mind and the immediate reaction of one's eyes. If one has not spent sufficient apprentice-time in the field watching and wandering about the idea one might image, (stalking it like a lion), then one is handicapped in just picking up a fast-shooting camera and imagining "the picture will frame itself" or "the crop will just arrive at one's conscious level". None of that happens, of course!

If all this was so easy, Edward Weston would not have driven his family crazy, (as he labored to conceptualize his new images and was so obsessional in that pursuit that his family could hardly move around the house sometimes). Composition is not always an easy process. Similarly once the picture is latent in the camera or on the screen, it now demands different things of the brain. The picture, being a nascent living thing makes demands of us. This in itself tried to force changes in our original concept. If it doesn't then the picture has not much life in it! It's normal for the artist to make some concession to the physical reality of the picture that develops under his or her craftsmanship. That means we optimize and rework the expression of our original concept based on what we sense and experience in the new art as it's being formed under our control.

So for Rachel to get help with cropping is not to replace her own intent with someone else's, but rather to inform it, to enable her to see what new avenues she might explore when next out hunting for a scene. With this feedback, maybe her initial vision, in future, will be so strong that she can carry it though without outside help, as she will have a direction that fired from within.

I agree, that unless one is doing commercial advertising or some other teamwork, the photographer should be able to take his/her project from concept to capture through processing to presentation without outside help.

Asher

To me it's hilarious to hear that Annie Liebowitz and other famous photographers might use retouch artists for their work routinely. for a wedding or catalog, that's perfectly fine but for art I wonder. now it is true that the great masters used apprentices to help fill in various figures!