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The importance of "Creative Cropping"
About a year ago I had a professional photographer friend over for dinner. That
night I showed him some of my photographs and asked him for his input. What he
shared with me that night ended up taking my photography to a whole new level,
and I would now like to share that wisdom with you...
"Learn how to properly and creatively crop your photographs."
For decades, the standard photograph sizes have been 3 x 5, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8 x
10, 11 x 14, 16 x 20, etc. In the old days, you would take your negatives to a
shop and choose which sizes you wanted. You had the choice of various sizes, but
you never really had the choice to change the dimensions and proportions of the
sizes. In other words, if you had a nice wide landscape, you could not crop out
some of the top and bottom and get a print with an unconventional size such as
14 x 5. The point here is this: those old traditional sizes and proportions have
been limiting your creativity of expression as an artist and photographer.
It is time for you to start cropping your photographs differently and in such a
way as to maximize your creative expression of the scenes in your photographs.
For example, when my friend looked at one of my photos of a beautiful harbor in
Maine, he suggested that I crop out a lot of the somewhat boring sky, as well as
some of the uninteresting foreground. He taught me that these areas are often
wasted space because they contain elements that are uninteresting and that do
not add to the overall composition of the photograph. He was right!
That very night after my friend left, I jumped on my laptop and started
immediately re-cropping a lot of my nature landscapes. I could not believe what
a shocking difference it made. What had been a good photograph suddenly became a
great photograph because the dynamics of the composition had changed to be more
artistic and creative. Now, a year later, I automatically crop all of my
photographs in this more free and creative way, and I have never looked back at
the traditional dimensions and proportions.
One challenge I have had to learn to overcome has to do with framing my newly
cropped photographs. As you can imagine, the standard pre-made frames do not
match the dimensions of my creative photographs. I have found two solutions to
this problem.
The first solution is to simply have custom mats and frames made to match the
dimensions of my creatively cropped photographs. This is quite a bit more
expensive than using the old standard sized pre-made frames, but it is worth it
when you have a great photograph.
The second solution is to create an electronic mat in Adobe Photoshop that fits
the standard dimensions. In other words, if your image is 12 x 6, then you can
create a 14 x 11 mat by adding one inch to the top and bottom and 2.5 inches to
the left and right sides.
I encourage you to start cropping your photographs from now on from an artistic
and creative perspective, rather than staying confined to the limitations of the
traditional dimensions. If you would like to see some examples of creative
artistic cropping, you can visit my
inspirational photography website.
About the author: Josiah Friberg is a fine art landscape photographer from
Moravian Falls, North Carolina.
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