Do I Crop? If so, when?

A cropped image. Good luck finding a frame for this

Thanks for being here. I understand that some folks may find the title a bit odd, but please be patient and perhaps you will find something of value from this article.

What is Cropping?

The idea behind cropping an image is to use an aspect ratio that best tells your story, and also removes distractions that you could not remove any other way. However, that’s not why most people crop, so let’s examine the root causes of what may be unnecessary cropping, or cropping that hurts the story you want to tell.

The Picture Frame Conspiracy

There’s probably a questionable movie of that name being made for streaming today, but I think I’m first so I will go with it.

Let’s jump into the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman to understand this conspiracy thing.

When photography as a service came into being, there were no enlargers. For those who are sufficiently young to have never experienced working with an enlarger, it is a device that used a lens to project through a negative or positive onto paper for printing. The size of paper used influenced the lens and the height of the enlarger head.

What this means is that prints, that people bought for their homes were what we would call contact prints. The plate negative was laid on the paper in the dark, and then the exposure would be made onto the paper by passing light through the plate negative. If the plate was a 4” x 5”, then so was the print. If you wanted a bigger print, the photographer would use a larger format camera, perhaps a 5” x 7” or 8” x 10” or 11” x 14”. Then the buyer would go have a frame made, or the photography studio might provide a frame to hold the photograph. To make a smaller print more powerful, a matte board might be used to create a border around the print so it would fit a larger frame.

These frame sizes were defined because those where the sizes of the plates used in cameras right through the early 1900s. And since then, very little has changed in the frame industry for reasons I can only speculate upon, and most such speculations might sound nasty.

So What’s The Conspiracy?

Simply, there are very very few photographers still using large format negative cameras. I still have a use a 4x5, but I scan my negatives and print them on my photographic printer. With the advent of the use of 35mm motion picture film in still cameras, rotated 90 degrees in the still camera, that rendered a negative of 36mm wide by 24mm tall, we first encountered the 3:2 aspect ratio. This is different from the 4:5 aspect ration of the the 4x5. 8x10 and 11x14 and 35mm film photographers got used to cropping in the viewfinder when they knew that they would want to frame a print, because unless the frames were made custom, the negatives if fully printed did not fit ANY standard frame. An 8x12 or 12x8 frame has the 2:3 portrait or 3:2 landscape aspect ratio of the 35mm still negative. but it took until the mid 1980s for frame makers to even consider making frames for the most common aspect ratio of all time. Even today, its is much easier to buy an 8x10 frame than an 8x12 frame. The frame companies for whatever reason are living in the past and are way behind keeping up with reality.

The viewfinder of an interchangeable lens camera that is full frame or “crop sensor” preserves this 3:2 aspect ratio. So photographers making images with these cameras who use all of the sensor area, end up having to crop 17% of the image just to have it fit in a common frame. This is really really annoying. By the way, for those who use micro four thirds based cameras, you’re getting screwed as well, because your default aspect ratio is 4:3

Except If You Never Print

If you never make prints for your wall, or if you only make machine 4x6s at the local Walmart, you probably don’t care about the framing issue. Nor should you.

When Do I Crop?

The best practice is to always do everything possible to get things right in camera. That means thinking about your outcome as you get ready to make the image. Are you going to be making 8x0 prints because you are producing a calendar? Better be sure to crop properly in the viewfinder to avoid chopping something off you don’t want to lose in post processing.

Addressing This Issue

Some cameras offer framing overlays in electronic viewfinders in addition to the native aspect ratio such as 5:4, and even 1:1 If your camera does this, it can be a real advantage because you can see while composing the framing for your anticipated outcome aspect ratio. If your camera doesn’t do this, you have to learn to pre visualize the outcome. An easy way is to purchase a 5x7 black matt with a 4x5 cutout. Use it to do your framing and compositional planning and then make the image taking into plan that there are things that you will see in the viewfinder that you know will be cut off.

Another option of course, is to choose to use the aspect ratio that your camera delivers and not be constrained by stupid frame constraints. It may mean spending a bit more on a frame of the proper aspect ratio, but that can be worthwhile.

What I teach my students to do is to use white space around their images. Define the crop that serves your image best, but when laying it out for printing, set the canvas size to be the same dimensions as a common picture frame. You can get an 8x12 matt for an 11x14 frame, or print the image a bit smaller to fit the frame size that you want to use leaving some white space around it. At a recent meeting of the camera club that I operate, a member shared an image that she had made, and then used additional layers behind the image in Photoshop to make a stepped series of virtual matts that looked fantastic.

Do I Crop to an Aspect Ratio?

This is a common thing. It’s always a compromise. Crop to suit the story, never the frame or the paper size or how your social media service wants things to be. Common aspect ratios are BORING unless they really serve the image and I rarely find an image that will not benefit from some cropping. I probably crop more than 90% of my images, and never because the lens that I used did not have the proper angle of view. I use cropping as an artistic tool, part of the creative’s toolbox. A panorama needs to be much wider than it is tall to have the impact that you want. A headshot may be better served by a square crop.

Wrap Up

There are no rules for cropping. Digital image-making and printing frees us from the old constraints, so the only restraints on you, are the one’s that you choose to wear.

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