# Cropping



## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

How many images are there in a photograph?

Often I take a photograph of a scene that my eyes have seen, but later when I view the image on screen, I see it differently. Again, often I crop the image to portray something that I didn't take in at the time of shooting.

These are three different crops from the same photograph. The final image is the scene that I saw at the moment of capture.

Crop 1 - Reflections










Crop 2 - Gone Fishin' 










Crop 3 - Fishing boats










The original photo of a pier at Mevagissey, Cornwall, UK


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

yep - the crop tool is one of my favourites - for you, having a full frame sensor camera Donald it gives you so many options within a well framed shot.

When teaching wet photography to secondary school students I used to try to get through to them that they could crop images in the darkroom to enhance them - many couldn't grasp the concept of doing this with enlarger height at first, thinking that each shot could only be printed as it was taken :laugh:


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## etaf (Dec 28, 2008)

i do this all the time - hence the reason I always recommend using the max quality and resolution - otherwise the cropped images cannot be printed without more manipulation 
with tools like Genuine Fractals


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Absolutely spot on. I suppose a mantra could be "Crop the Crap".

In reality, I would take a guess that 98% or more of my photographs have some cropping ... from mild to severe!

Many of them also have distractions removed too. Did you notice the foliage, van and car vanish from crop 2 & 3? :grin:

EDIT: yes, having a full frame sensor @ 21.5Mpx (5616x3744px) does help...


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## Acuta73 (Mar 17, 2008)

21.5Mpx?? /jelous (send me as many texture images as possible, tile-able a large plus, Mkay?)

I learned my lesson on cropping with my harbor pic this July. Took a pretty mediocre pic to one I now have family and friends requesting prints of...

DF pushed me, so credit to him, credit again to whoever pushed him.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Thanks Acuta .. I don't actually know where I got it from .. I think it just emerged when I realised that I could get a damn good close up of something (insects etc) by zooming in using the control key and mouse scroll button and then crop .. might have picked t up by looking at some good photo work by others but never actually thought about it .. 

I too used to think that photos were "taken" and not made .. however having seen my photos come to life ,after some gentle "heavy" prodding by Donald & others :laugh:, I experiment all the time, both taking photo's and "tweaking" them afterwards

I have also found that the possible areas of cropping in a photo are infinite, depending upon what one is looking at emphasising.


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Nicely said DF - 'made not taken'

Here is the reverse of a cropped image - a panorama of the same place Mevagissy - made up from 4 images with distracting poer cables and a power pole removed :wink: (making the photo - :grin

I have left it largish so that zoom in detail still there.












Opps - wrong picture... Hang on, I will upload the right one in a few minutes! Don't go away...

Here we are - hopefully the right image...











(As a point of interest, three days after I took (made) these photos, Mevagissy was on the TV news - torrantial rain and flooding... )


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