Cropping

Cropping has always been something I have thought of as a 'repair' tool, something used after careless composition. I have never previously thought of using it as a creative tool, and I enjoyed looking through my images to see which ones could be transformed with this tool.

55mm, f/5.7, 1/250, ISO 200

This is an image I took of a caravan of camels in Mojácar, Spain. I remember that initially I wanted to get a shot of the whole caravan, but unruly camels and other people getting in the way made the idea impossible. Instead, I decided to focus on one camel, but also have the camel in front in the frame to show that there were multiple camels. I was also certain I wanted to mountains to create a nice backdrop, as well as making sure there was adequate space in front of the main camel so it had somewhere to 'go' in the frame. In the cropped image I have chosen to just isolate the main camel as the only subject. Because of this, the viewer is drawn much better to the main camel without getting distracted elsewhere, but it now looks like only one camel was present.

18mm, f/3.5, 1/200, ISO 2000

I took this image in Venice, Italy in 2007. The tree and the lovely texture on the upturned boat caught my eye, as did the clear, bright blue sky. For that reason, I chose the composition in the original image, to include all three elements. I also found in the exercise on balance that my choice of composition has skewed the balance, but in this circumstance I think it works. In my cropped version I have removed the empty expanse of sky, and also cropped closer on the right-hand side to match the left. I do enjoy the greater focus on the tree foliage, with all its detail, but the shot feels more ordinary, and too stifling. Also, you can no longer see the boat-launching ramp terminating at the water, which I felt added to the original image. The crop is certainly a viable alternative, but I still think I prefer the original uncropped version in this instance.

55mm, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO 200

A more extreme crop than the other two, the main subject was originally the beach loungers on Mojácar Playa beach, with the hillside buildings providing context. By doing such an extreme crop, I have changed the main subject completely as well as the orientation, creating an entirely new image. I actually really like this crop, but the image is probably too small to be of much use.

As demonstrated in this series of images, cropping is a useful tool in many ways, whether it is drawing more focus to the main subject, removing extraneous material or creating a new subject entirely. The downside to cropping is that it wastes valuable pixels, and as my Nikon D50 is just a 6.1mp camera, I don't have many spare to waste. This is a concept I recognised quite soon after I bought my camera about six or seven years ago, and as such avoiding unnecessary wasted space in the frame has always been one of my main goals when composing my images. With that being said, I still make mistakes and oversights, as can be seen in my shot earlier in the course of the Birmingham wheel and library, where I accidentally included lots of dull foreground. In that instance, a small crop after the fact would make huge improvements to the image.