Shades of Smiles, originally uploaded by white-gal.
Above is the original photo. Below is the cropped photo.
First things first, these photos were provided by flickr user – white-gal. I saw her post in a rating group for black and white photos, and when I read the captions about cropping I decided to lay out an opinion of my own.
If you click the first picture and go back to her flickr account, you’ll see where several people suggested crops that became smaller and smaller. The second picture is the result of cropping a bit to try to form a better composition. The following is what I said when I rated her picture:
“I looked at the other picture as well. Some times I think people outcry crop in order to bring technical order to a photo. I would argue that without the crop, it looks like you can not contain the wonderful scene of child faces…which would have worked very well. With the crop it seems as though order has been brought to a scene that wasn’t necessarily as chill and even. I like the original. This photo is definitely splendid as well…thanks for sharing.”
The fact of the matter is that crops can definitely bring new life to a photo, correct a bad composition once you’ve taken the photo, and can even bring attention to new portions of a photo that lacked that attention. My argument in this case is that some times cropping for technical mastery can take away some significance from the photo. In this case, I enjoy photo 1 (top) because it looks like the camera can not contain the amount of children that are actually in the scene, thus giving the picture a frame of reference or an idea about where and what. In the second photo, I start to lose my frame of reference. It is not teeming with children other then those in the new crop.
With that said, be flexible with your crop. Sometimes cropping to obtain the Rule of Thirds will make your picture better, some times it won’t. It’s the beauty of photography, you can follow rules or not…always experiment, and always think about the message you are trying to convey with your image.
Check out more of white-gal photostream – Click Here
