A Word About Cropping May 22, 2009
Posted by Emily in : Photography , 5commentsI would like to preface this post with this thought, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about.”
But, that has never stopped me from talking about something I know nothing about.
In fact, I think I’m pretty dang experienced with talking about things of which I have no knowledge. (I’m not sure if I should be proud of this or not . . .)
Some of you have emailed asking me to share more of my uneducated knowledge about photography.
So today I thought I’d talk about cropping.
We have a tendency to take pictures of everything we see; the whole wide-angle-panoramic-view of what our eyes see in real life.
Unfortunately the “amazing-ness” of what our eyes see is not always translated into the camera lens and getting a photo of everything (like the telephone pole that’s in the way, extra people, lots of foreground, you name it) takes away from what’s really happening.
This for example:
I was trying to photograph my neighbor’s very busy new puppy. He’s such a cute little runt dog, but it’s hard to focus on all the puppy cute-ness with the grey pole in the foreground.
So I cropped it out, and cropped the picture in around all the edges to bring the focus back to the puppy.
This is another example:
This is the S.O.O.C. (straight out of the camera) shot of one of my favorite pictures. These two little girls are very busy, and capturing them like this, completely candid, (they didn’t know I was taking pictures, these looks were given in my general direction as they were eating lunch. It lasted about .09 seconds.) was mere happenstance.
But I LOVED how this rare moment (the two of them looking in my direction) was captured.
I cropped out the string cheese wrapper, and extra background, and enhanced the color.
I liked this photo a lot more, but something still bothered me . . .
I thought the bright colored bowls distracted from the cute subjects.
So I changed the photo to a black and white.
Now, I LOVE this photo. The bowls are no longer a distraction, and the focus is back on their little faces.
There you have it.
Start cropping! 
