How much to crop

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bajadreamer

bajadreamer

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One of the first questions that often comes to me when processing my shots is "How much to crop?". Do I focus on the bird or do I include more of the environment the bird was in? This is a pair of photos, one uncropped and the other obviously cropped. Which do you prefer? Or one in between or even cropped more. These are Boucard's Wrens, a very common bird in the thorn forests of south central Mexico. At dawn, these birds are very visible and vocal, often fighting for the primo perch among the cactus plants.
20181128-Boucard's Wren Oaxaca Valley lr ps (1 of 1).jpg
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20181128-Boucard's Wren Oaxaca Valley 1 lr ps (1 of 1).jpg
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Personally if my images work as shot I don't crop at all unless necessary for aspect ratio reasons (e.g. shooting headshots intended for 8x10 printing with a 2x3 AR camera). Sure there are very dynamic subjects like BIF or some fast team sports (e.g. Hockey) where I'll intentionally shoot loose with the intention of compositional cropping in post but for relatively static scenes I try to nail it in camera and only crop those if the captured frame just doesn't work.

I realize that many other photogs feel differently and folks freely crop all the time these days but I still come from the 'try hard to get it right in the camera' days and see most cropping as a sometimes necessary evil rather than a go-to to try to change a shot.

From that perspective I'd personally stick with the top shot or perhaps do a small aspect ratio crop but would avoid cropping as an after the fact zoom. I don't think there's anything wrong with smaller subject size if the rest of the frame helps tell a story, in this case a story about the bird's environment. If the rest of the frame didn't help tell the story (e.g. a lot of clutter, or plain blue sky) I might grudgingly crop but then I'd likely wish I'd had more lens or been able to get closer and probably wouldn't be super psyched about the shot.

But that's just me and from following these forums for a while I'm probably in the minority with that view.
 
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Following Dave’s response, I used to feel like you... but now I look at anything I have to crop as something I didn’t do well enough while taking the photo... it’s something that I use to drive me now to become better. There will always be thing we want to be better at or something we didn’t notice while shooting. and I’d rather have a photo of a Sasquatch wearing a skirt and have to crop it... than not have a photo at all. Sometime we can’t change things we can only take the photo or not.


the shot above is nice but the background is going to really hard to get by... so like Dave I would leave it uncropped.
 
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Hear you both. I tend to shoot primes +/- extenders far more often than zooms and shooting birds, often do not have the luxury of using "foot zooms", so often end up with less than ideal compositions. If in doubt I tend to try to emphasize the primary subject, the bird. This is certainly one of the primary factors (maybe "the" factor) than fuels the 20 MP vs 45 MP debates concerning camera resolution.
 
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bajadreamer said:
Hear you both. I tend to shoot primes +/- extenders far more often than zooms and shooting birds, often do not have the luxury of using "foot zooms", so often end up with less than ideal compositions. If in doubt I tend to try to emphasize the primary subject, the bird. This is certainly one of the primary factors (maybe "the" factor) than fuels the 20 MP vs 45 MP debates concerning camera resolution.
Click to expand...

Yes I hear you, like you I shot primes as well.. the only zoom lens I own is the 70-200. and like you I like shooting birds but for me this time of years it really tuff, most are flying the coop for warmer weather.
 
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In my days of Black and White film photography, we had special negative holders that would add a 'verification border' to prove that the image was printed without cropping. However, I now reluctantly crop many of my bird photos taken with fixed focal length lenses. Even with an 800mm lens + 1.25 TC, I never seem to be close enough (especially for small birds).
 
The full image looks better to me.
Personally, I try to get it right on the camera but have to crop more often than I'd like due to my inexperience in photography or not owning the right lens such as using my 200-500 for closeups. Or perhaps intentionally keep a further distance to not disturb a nest site or other wildlife. I always try my best not to disturb nature. Having the natural environment in a shot is not such a bad thing.
Many times I know I am going to crop a shot in order to get 16:9 or whatever reason so I keep that in mind.

Nice Wrens.
 
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FWIW, I'd also say: improved sensors, changing tastes and changing display media has impacted the decision of whether and how to crop. IOW, back in the film days, especially shooting slide film, cropping was mostly done for simple Aspect Ratio (AR) reasons like shooting wedding portraits with a 35mm camera when the wedding party wanted 8x10 prints instead of the resulting 8x12 prints you'd get with 35mm's 2x3 AR. Similarly if you shot with a medium format camera with a 4x5 AR you'd display a lot of work with that AR and generally only crop when the output format demanded something different.

But things have changed over the years:

- Digital cameras evolved till they had a lot more intrinsic resolution than the film they replaced so deeper cropping became a reasonable possibility without sacrificing too much IQ. Basically some of the deep crops we see all the time for small birds and other wildlife subjects with a camera like a D850 or Z7 became possible where a deep crop like that into a 35mm slide just couldn't deliver similar quality. So some of the current acceptance of cropping for zoom reasons comes down to..... well we can so why not?

- A wider variety of ARs came into common usage. Sure there were 1:1, 2:3, 4:5 and even some very strange AR film cameras (e.g. film based pano cameras) back in the day but most photographers primarily used one type or another for their work and an awful lot used 35mm with its 2:3 aspect ratio so that became something of a standard for image display. Images still got cropped during printing or for editorial uses to fit page space but a lot of work was displayed in 2:3 or 4:5 ARs and you didn't see a lot of 16:9 or even wider panorama crops or the like.

- Fast forward to 2020 and things like 16:9 displays are common and turn out to be a pretty good way to display a lot of landscape images. Panorama stitches have become popular and displaying images in ultrawide formats has become fairly common. Some social media outlets really like the 1:1 AR so a lot of folks crop to that shape, web site uses often demand some strange and very wide (or very tall) aspect ratios and overall we have a lot more camera resolution to work with so we can get away with a lot more cropping.

Anyway, to me it's complicated the crop discussion as there's cropping for display AR purposes which may or may not be subtle, ideally subtle cropping for compositional purposes which can help an image a lot especially with very fast dynamic subjects that are hard to track exactly as we'd like and then there's cropping for 'digital zoom' reasons which we can do a lot more than we used to do but is never ideal from the standpoint of maximizing image quality. It's that last one I try to avoid but like a lot of folks have done when necessary though I don't really think of those as my best images.
 
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Hut said:
The full image looks better to me.
Personally, I try to get it right on the camera but have to crop more often than I'd like due to my inexperience in photography or not owning the right lens such as using my 200-500 for closeups. Or perhaps intentionally keep a further distance to not disturb a nest site or other wildlife. I always try my best not to disturb nature. Having the natural environment in a shot is not such a bad thing.
Many times I know I am going to crop a shot in order to get 16:9 or whatever reason so I keep that in mind.

Nice Wrens.
Click to expand...
Closely related to Cactus Wrens that we are familiar with in the SW US and Baja Mexico. Very vocal, animated, and although not colorful, IMO beautiful birds. Not sure about the creosote question; not much of a botanist, but certainly the environment was right. Very dry, commonly referred to as "The Thorn Forest". Maybe 1000-1200 acres of thorny plants adjacent to agricultural land. I tend to crop primarily to shift focus on the birds, but sometimes find myself overdoing it. I rarely print, so pixel density is not a major issue for me.
 
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DRwyoming said:
FWIW, I'd also say: improved sensors, changing tastes and changing display media has impacted the decision of whether and how to crop. IOW, back in the film days, especially shooting slide film, cropping was mostly done for simple Aspect Ratio (AR) reasons like shooting wedding portraits with a 35mm camera when the wedding party wanted 8x10 prints instead of the resulting 8x12 prints you'd get with 35mm's 2x3 AR. Similarly if you shot with a medium format camera with a 4x5 AR you'd display a lot of work with that AR and generally only crop when the output format demanded something different.

Things have changed in my short "career" as a bird photographer, maybe 10 years total. I try to keep the original ratio (3:2) in my master file, but when I convert to JPEG I often do not adhere to any set ratio. So often I end up cropping to remove something I find distracting or objectionable (like an OOF object or a blown out area) in my shots, that I then end up with an odd aspect ratio.
Click to expand...
 
bajadreamer said:
Closely related to Cactus Wrens that we are familiar with in the SW US and Baja Mexico. Very vocal, animated, and although not colorful, IMO beautiful birds. Not sure about the creosote question; not much of a botanist, but certainly the environment was right. Very dry, commonly referred to as "The Thorn Forest". Maybe 1000-1200 acres of thorny plants adjacent to agricultural land. I tend to crop primarily to shift focus on the birds, but sometimes find myself overdoing it. I rarely print, so pixel density is not a major issue for me.
Click to expand...
I was actually born and raised in Arizona, I miss the natural environment down there sometimes but not much else. Love all the Wrens
 
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bajadreamer said:
One of the first questions that often comes to me when processing my shots is "How much to crop?". Do I focus on the bird or do I include more of the environment the bird was in? This is a pair of photos, one uncropped and the other obviously cropped. Which do you prefer? Or one in between or even cropped more. These are Boucard's Wrens, a very common bird in the thorn forests of south central Mexico. At dawn, these birds are very visible and vocal, often fighting for the primo perch among the cactus plants.
Click to expand...

Yes - In a portfolio you'd like to have both. You'd like to have some tight shots, but also some environmental shots.

To me, I like the first shot with more of the environment. The tight crop shows more detail - and more softness in the image. I think you reach a point with tight crops that you don't need any more. The interesting photo has more context, behavior, or similar features.
 
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EricBowles said:
Yes - In a portfolio you'd like to have both. You'd like to have some tight shots, but also some environmental shots.

To me, I like the first shot with more of the environment. The tight crop shows more detail - and more softness in the image. I think you reach a point with tight crops that you don't need any more. The interesting photo has more context, behavior, or similar features.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your thoughts. I agree and tend to keep the uncropped, or minimally cropped, shot as my master file. When I convert to JPEG I crop to taste. Usually I end up cropping too much, and as you have noted, exaggerate any deficiencies of the shot.
 
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I was at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm a few years ago when a Nat Geo crew showed up. They had spent three months in the field photographing alligators in a natural context. But they spent a week at the Alligator Farm for their closeups. The alligators were captive. They would respond on command and open their mouth or take food. They even would come when called. But the documentary would not be complete without both the environmental images and the close ups. The Nat Geo team did not even try to get the shots in just one location - it was planned to be at the Alligator Farm from the start.

The Alligator Farm is very well known. I even recognize the trees and occasionally one of the birds when I see contest submissions. It's great for shots of chicks in a nest, birds landing, nesting, courtship, etc. But the context is rather ordinary. If you want environmental images, you go somewhere else. But for close ups or for practice, the Alligator Farm cannot be beaten. The risk is all of those close ups create a degree of sameness.
 
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In this case I think the first shot is just a better composition. That said, I'm not afraid to crop and will do so when it improves the image.
 
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EricBowles said:
I was at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm a few years ago when a Nat Geo crew showed up. They had spent three months in the field photographing alligators in a natural context. But they spent a week at the Alligator Farm for their closeups. The alligators were captive. They would respond on command and open their mouth or take food. They even would come when called. But the documentary would not be complete without both the environmental images and the close ups. The Nat Geo team did not even try to get the shots in just one location - it was planned to be at the Alligator Farm from the start.

The Alligator Farm is very well known. I even recognize the trees and occasionally one of the birds when I see contest submissions. It's great for shots of chicks in a nest, birds landing, nesting, courtship, etc. But the context is rather ordinary. If you want environmental images, you go somewhere else. But for close ups or for practice, the Alligator Farm cannot be beaten. The risk is all of those close ups create a degree of sameness.
Click to expand...

I tend to forget or am ignorant of how much work goes into those Nat Geo/BBC, etc shots. I was at an ecolodge in Ecuador when BBC was there. The crew (10 people) rented the entire lodge for 30 days to film for one of the Planet Earth documentaries. After those 30 days, they were very happy with their work-a little over 4 minutes made it into the documentary. 10 people, 30 days, countless clips of video for 4 magnificent minutes of nature documentary.
 
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If you need to crop a photo for a particular purpose you should go ahead and do it. 500 million instagramers can't be wrong :LOL:

Like the cropped one as it shows less of the busy background but does highlight the out of focus area behind the head of the left bird. Cheers RB
 
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Woodyg3 said:
That said, I'm not afraid to crop and will do so when it improves the image.
Click to expand...

Yep - I agree.

Besides the obvious of making the image's subject larger there are many times better compositions to be had by cropping.

Even if the image subject is large enough sometimes there is a better "picture in the picture" to be found by cropping.
 
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I like the looser crop (wider). I like to see more of the environment and in this case I also like the composition more on the wider shot.
In my opinion a lot of photographers are more concern with cropping tight on the subject, ignoring the composition and the "story".
 
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NA4M said:
Yep - I agree.

Besides the obvious of making the image's subject larger there are many times better compositions to be had by cropping.

Even if the image subject is large enough sometimes there is a better "picture in the picture" to be found by cropping.
Click to expand...
Certainly true, IMO. A constant battle for me when I am processing a shot.
 
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