Pixby wrote:
Sometime amount the era I began to use 35mm cameras, I developed a
framing habit so as not to lose any precious resolution when the images
were enlarged. I unconsciously do it now and almost never crop an image
unless it's to accommodate "perfect portrait" size - the 2/3rds thing.

I double booked this weekend and had to engage a contract Photographer
for the 'other' shoot. I've just been going through his work ready to
start printing and discovered a lot of his shots need cropping. Nothing
wrong with his photography, just the fact he leaves lots of room in the
image.

How many other people make cropping a normal event when editing? Just
curious.


I sometimes crop completely in the viewfinder, but in a lot of shots,
magazine editors want space around the central subject to display
heads, captions, whatever they choose. Thus, space is left for what the
paying customer wants. Because probably 60-70% of my work is aimed at
magazines, that kind of shooting gets to be a habit (but it is more
desired with certain types of magazines than others, so the habit can
also become a problem).

I've found that with full vehicle shots, extra space around the subject
is a help. For individual features of the vehicle, tight cropping,
often tighter and shaped differently than the sensor, is wanted...but
in other cases, filling the frame is fine, leaving final crop to the
graphics department.

For some kinds of articles, say on woodworking tools, filling the frame
at close up ranges is great. Recently, I did a piece on a jointer that
uses cutters that are about 3/8" square. I went macro with those, next
to a dime, and also did a near macro shot of the entire 8" wide head.
The latter was cropped.

Worked really well.

It differs, in other words, depending on what the customer wants.