16/07/10
If the only way an image is ever used is as it comes from the camera, i.e. in it's original size and aspect ratio, then several extremely valuable composition ticks are being missed.
I frequently sense ill informed purists turning up their noses at the prospect of cropping on the grounds that cropping an image in order to enhance it's composition is somehow cheating. OK one of the most important judgements a photographer performs during the capture of an image is to make decisions about composition: portrait or landscape, central or non-central main subject, zoomed-in or wide view, etc; however there are times when the pace or physical layout of an event prevents a change of lens, position or angle in order to get the perfect shot. This is when cropping during post-production becomes a crucially important tool in your creative arsenal.
Delaying a decision about composition until a later stage in the creation of an image can also give you the opportunity to compare different compositions against each other before committing yourself. One of the more interesting developments in current DSLR products is the anticipated Canon square DSLR sensor, which will mean that users will be able to leave even the most basic decisions about cropping (i.e. portrait , landscape or even simply square) until the post production stage. Users of 6x6 medium format equipment already have this luxury, but unfortunately in equipment with arguably less immediate ergonomic versatility than a DSLR.
How much and what information from the background is to be retained can also have a very powerful influence on the final image. However making decisions about background content when capturing images at speed can simply be impractical, particularly when the photographer is concentrating primarily on their principal subject/s (in my case generally the bride and groom). Once again leaving decisions about just how much background to include in your image and exactly which elements need to be excluded until the post production stage is simply far more reliable and therefore practical than simply 'getting it right in-camera'.
If we look at the two different versions of the photo in this article we can soon see how a simple adjustment of the image by cropping has improved the quality of the shot considerably. In the first version the bride can be seen accompanied by her hair dresser having her veil adjusted - a simple bridal preparation shot with all the necessary information included to record that particular activity. However if we now look at the cropped version of the image we can see several subtle but important cropping decisions have been made in post production, which have enhanced the image considerably. The first is the placement of the brides eyes a little closer to the intersection of thirds at the right hand side of the image, directing the eye a little more forcefully to this detail and the rest of the bride's face. OK you might say that actually her eyes were pretty much in this zone of the original picture anyway, but I still think in this instance the subtle shift of position is helping the image. Next we have the exclusion of the hair dresser's eyes top left, which helps to reduce her importance in the image considerably and forces our eye back to the brides face as the dominant element in the frame. Next we have the removal of two important distractions from the image: first the large highlight area behind the hairdresser's neck and second the removal of the reflected item of furniture on the right lower portion of the frame, the latter also takes away a fairly large area of dull and unnecessary background in the process. A bi-product of all of these is also obviously to increase the size of the bride's head in the image, again increasing her dominance of the scene. So by thoughtful cropping of this image we've managed a significant increase in the visual gravity of the bride's face and her expression, while still preserving a sense of the activity and space around her. You could argue that this would have been perfectly manageable in-camera as there is no change to the aspect ratio of the image. However it's important to remember that this was an 'on the fly' shot in a constantly changing situation, for which I probably had only a second or two at best to compose and capture the image.
