A Long Run Off A Short Pier
Comments: 7
Four boys enjoy one of the oldest summer past-times there is: leaping from a high place into water.
For some reason I happily crop digital shots but less eagerly crop film. I don’t have a digital SLR, so what you see with my digital camera isn’t ever that close to what you get and maybe this is why cropping is more of a necessity. But I don’t hold to any purist dictum about never cropping. The idea is to get a good photograph and they’re often buried further below the surface than you’d like.
Here are two shots from the same photograph. The one above is as tight as you’d want — any tighter and you’d lose the horizon and then the kid on the right would be jumping god-knows-where and there’d be an element of anxiety. Below is pretty much the full frame (minus a blur in the extreme foreground from the top of someone’s head).
It’s always interesting to me to see how you can get quite different shots out of the same frame.
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Posted to Photographs • 2003.09.16 (Tue) • 14:52
Comments
Posted by Adam 2003.09.16, 17:25
I also am a regular and heavy cropper of my digital photos. It stems from my approach towards taking the photos - to avoid camera shake on long focal lengths, I use the minimum zoom and take lots of wide-angle shots. Later on in the digital darkroom, I crop and adjust whichever of the set is the most worthy.
This non-zooming approach implies that resolution is more important than optical zoom, when shopping for a camera. My Pentax Optio S is 3MP and has a 3 x optical zoom, but I’d gladly trade it for a 5MP fixed lens camera, if one existed in the same compact dimensions as the Pentax!
When I hand my camera to friends for photos of the photographer, the first thing they do if amateur photographers is zoom in, all the way! Even on the best camera with an image stabiliser, these photos never have a good chance of being shake-free.
The digital approach implies a lack of care taken in framing candid photographs. In my eyes, this is a fair trade-off. It is unarguable that capturing ‘the moment’ in a standard composition is more important to producing a quality image than a beautifully composed photo taken at the wrong moment.
As a side effect of all this, I still enjoy pulling out My Nikon SLR, only it is never going to fit in my pants pocket unobtrusively!
Posted by Jeff 2003.09.16, 23:53
I have a Nikon 5700. It is sort of like an SLR in that what you see in the viewfinder is just about what you get (it’s an electronic viewfinder). The camera is 5MP with an 8X optical zoom, which I like.
With long shots as the one above, I might have shot it in the same way you did. A photographer from way back, I have no problem with cropping (purism went out with the end of the 4x5 era IMHO). I would have cropped it a little differently, though. I love the people looking up at the kids on the top. I would have cropped out a bit of the top and right of the photo to include them (and the car), but a little less sky and ocean/rock for the right balance.
Of the two you’ve posted, I think the full shot is more interesting.
Posted by qB 2003.09.17, 05:29
I mostly take quick snaps with a Sony Cybershot U which is 2 megapixels, no viewfinder and no zoom. The pictures are nearly always “buried” and have to be carefully removed from the surroundings. I’d got so used to thinking visually that way it was difficult to adjust to my new Samsun V4 (4 mega pixels, optical and digital zoom). I realised that I got better quality shots if I ignored the zoom on it and adopted the same approach as with the Sony. The zoomed pictures were a) never ‘what you see is what you get’ and b) never quite in focus. So back to cropping!
Posted by Jerry Halstead 2003.09.17, 20:45
Excellent shot!
I don’t follow any guidelines regarding crops or zooms. Sometimes I get lucky and find that a shot doesn’t need to be cropped or messed with in photoshop. Other times there is a pleasant surprise just waiting to be extracted.
What I’ve noticed with my new camera is that the increased resolution provides more “room” to crop, where the previous camera’s shots turned out grainy if cropped too close.
Posted by Scott Johnson 2003.09.18, 03:43
When I snap a photo, I always try for the best composition. I’d love to never need to crop a photo. But the fact is that I’m just not that good. In order to get better shots, I often MUST crop.
Posted by Jordan Mendelson 2003.09.19, 01:52
There is an old saying in photography. If you want better shots, move closer. If you think you’re too close, move closer.
The problem is with how your eye sees a scene in real life versus how it sees a photograph. Your brain is too good at filtering out what you aren’t focusing on, but the circuitry just doesn’t work correctly when you are talking about an image that takes up only a small portion of your field of view.
The hardest part about it though is that you well, need to move closer and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Smile. Put down your camera. Walk closer. Stand for a little while and when your subjects are comfortable, take a picture. Or put on some earphones, blast some good music and ignore the world while taking photos.
Posted by Simone 2003.09.19, 21:42
beautifull symbolic pic. thank you.
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