An incidental remark on Twitter this week provoked a number of strongly held opinions and caused me to reflect on my own views on the subject. I’d started a blog some months ago after hearing an old lag belittling the the work of another photographer on the basis that they had cropped their image. Their view was that only an uncropped image was ‘pure’.
Two ends of the spectrum exist roughly ranging from 'anything less than getting it exactly right in camera is impure’ to 'anything goes'.
Inevitably, most people fall away from the extremes but there are those who nail their flags right on the very end.
Cropping takes two forms, either to concentrate attention on a smaller section of the captured or to change the original aspect ratio. First a little history. If you make a contact print from either glass, film or paper negative, then there is no way to crop without reducing the overall size of the final print by trimming its edges. Only with the advent of the photographic enlarger was it straightforward to make a print of a section of a negative. Effectively however, cropping of the final image compared with that originally captured, is as old as photography itself.
In the days of film there was a fashion in some circles for using a film holder that was larger than the film area to allow the final print to show the areas of rebate around the image. The aim was to provide proof of the use of the whole image. Cropping was inferior, the use of the entire image was the ‘pure’ option.
With digital images, cropping is easy and serves to highlight the debate. Is there less truth in a cropped image? One perspective offered this week was
'some of us feel that large crops demonstrate a lack of field craft or pre visualisation'
I think that view is shared by many photographers and part of the wider view that the most pure image is always the one closest to that which is captured in the camera.
However I think there is a healthy divergence of opinion on what constitutes a pure lineage between the start and the end of the process and perhaps even more importantly precisely where that lineage begins. Joe Cornish often refers to
'that essential umbilical cord stretching from the final image back to the landscape'.
I can easily subscribe to a view that values truth to the original scene. There are however equally positive views that place equivalent value on the permission given to the photographer to manipulate the scene in order to better represent their response to it.
‘The only workable definition of art is the transformation of reality through the hand and eye of an artist. Artists don’t photocopy, they make images that transcend.’ - slightly misremembered from David Ward (original source David Warburton - The Art Question)
However much we crop a landscape image after capture, the resulting image remains true to the scene.
I'm a firm believer in composition being the bedrock of landscape photography.
"The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it."
John Szarkowski neatly encapsulates this above. The process, in my view, is about creative decisions and not the point in time at which the mechanics are undertaken. When I compose an image, I visualise how it will look. If I can achieve that by the use of a suitable focal length lens, by moving my position or by both that is all well and good and would, I’d suggest, constitute most landscape photographers' preferential way of working. This approach not least to preserve the largest file size possible.
If we insist that an image must be effectively uncropped in order to represent the highest standards of photography I think we miss much of what photography is about and also large parts of the reality faced by landscape photographers.
We can consider the two key points at which the decision to crop may be made.
In the field
If we begin with cropping a portion out of a larger image, the typical reason for this is that the distant scene does not fill the frame as we would wish. At this point our composition is already visualised. Our first thoughts are usually to zoom in, change to a longer focal length lens or to reduce the distance between ourselves and the scene we have spotted. Having a super long zoom lens or a backpack with long exotic primes does not make you a better photographer. Being able to carry such items in wild country says more about the good fortune of your health and wealth. The reality for most is that the lens we have with us reaches its maximum before we fill the frame or we risk losing that fleeting moment of light while trying to change lenses. We then make a decision at the point of capture to crop the resulting file.
Equally a scene may present an ideal panoramic format image but lighting and weather conditions may be varying too quickly to allow a stitched approach and again we decide at the point of capture that a crop will be made. Alternative the elements of a scene may best suit a square composition. These are creative decisions, made in the field and we should allow no one to deem them to be less in some way.
An old chestnut used in prime vs zoom arguments also surfaces here under the guise of fieldcraft. Generally this equates to getting into the appropriate position to make the image for the equipment you have rather than relying on a crop. It is often quoted in the succinct advice of ‘zoom with your feet’ or just ‘use your feet. I often wonder whether the purveyors of such advice have ever been outside let alone into wild or mountainous country. Firstly as we move towards the chosen scene then the perspective changes and the entire scene is altered completely. Most notably the relationship between subject and background features. It is no longer the image we visualised.
Secondly as anyone who has ever walked anywhere other than a dead flat surface knows, if you walk forwards or backwards in undulating country, then you either gain or lose height. Your entire viewpoint changes and again the composition is lost.
Cropping at point of capture is not lazy or substandard in some way. It is a creative decision and technical solution made according to the prevailing conditions and the equipment you have with you.
The image above is the original jpg from which the picture at the top of the blog was made. I was halfway up Kings How and the birches are about a km away on Grange Crags. I had a Nikon Z50 and a 50-250mm. This was at the 250mm end and so a 375mm equivalent. If I’d had a 200-500/600mm lens I could have composed and made the image perfectly in camera. However, I visualised the central group of birches against the near black background and wanted only a small sliver of land at their base.
The final version edited and cropped.
Crop chosen during processing
This form of cropping seems to upset some folk even more than the first and leads to it being vilified as even more ‘impure’. I don’t often work this way often as I really enjoy the problem solving aspect of composition in the field but occasionally I may crop in processing for one of four reasons:
To correct a minor oversight such as a branch intruding into the frame that I’d either not noticed or had incorrectly judged as inconsequential.
To refine my original choices made in the field
When a previously unnoticed composition is noticed that I’d not spotted in the field.
To adjust aspect ratio
Thanks to Sophie Carr, ( sophiecarrphotography.com ) I was reminded that when photographing waves or other unpredicable moving objects, space needs to be left to allow for a subsequent crop. This cannot be done precisely in real time.
The first two might be considered refinements or second versions of an image. The third is better considered as an entirely new image.
I’m always a little uneasy when commentators or judges get hot under the collar about any of the above. Photography is a creative process and all the above are creative decisions. Revisions, alterations and improvements are part of that creative process. If we require that only the first first version of any piece of art can be considered ‘pure’ then we diminish most of the great works of painting, poetry, music, cinema, etc that have ever been made.
Photography has many battles to fight, not least of which is the public perception that it is somehow less than painting. Requiring that a photograph must be made perfectly first time at the moment the shutter is pressed feels a little like protesting its case too hard.
I think we should fight for that ‘truth to the scene’. We should spread the word about protecting the places we photograph. Worrying about whether an image is cropped or not seems like looking for things about which to be annoyed.