Are five exclamation points enough for one title?
In my last article, I discussed the concept of cropping for aesthetics and what was the most radical aesthetically-motivated crop in my library. As it turned out most of them were Landscape crops. After writing the article and reconsidering my last line, sprinkled with Mark S.’s comments I decided to reevaluate crops from a vertical perspective to discover the most extreme portrait crop in my collection.
So just how vertical do I go with a crop when I am cropping for content and not to fit the space?
I looked around my walls and, in terms of custom-framed works already completed, 2:3 was the most radical ratio. In terms of framed art, I don’t seem to go all vertical pano on the crops. In fact – native aspect ratio seems to dominate. The 11×14 and 16x20s are common but they are cropping in – not cropping for.
I then decided to review my best images, my 4 and 5 star stuff from my library, to see what secrets they would reveal. What is the most radical vertical crop I have elevated to ‘my best stuff’?
This image (oddly taken with a 4:3 format camera) is the extreme vertical in my library. It is a 1:2 vertical that qualifies as a panoramic ratio (barely). It is a very vertical subject and much of the crop was driving by the lack of good space in front of or behind the subject. There was a lot of clutter and it had to be sacrificed. Another interesting tidbit: this was a JPEG capture due to having set my camera inadvertently to full auto.
Unlike in the horizontal or landscape crop, where I will go often to 2.5:1, 3:1 or even approaching 5:1, when it comes to portraits, I tend to top around 1:2 aspect ratio.
There must be a reason why I, and many others will go wide but not tall- at least to the extreme.
Rikk Flohr © 2011
In your 2:1 umbrella shot, are you cropping for or cropping into? It looks like you chose that crop to avoid the car on the left and the black bit on the right, rather than because the subject wanted that shape.
Your crop is a good crop — the low camera position coupled with the panoramic vertical crop emphasizes her height, while the umbrella keeps the eyes from going off the top and the building at the bottom gives interest and a stopping point to the bottom. But she’s on the right looking left, and I feel like more space on the left would help open up her gaze.
Is cropping around distractions another form — neither “for” nor “into”?
Not cropping into anything-except perhaps my own OCD. I cropped by hand and saw I was only a few pixels from 1:2 so I just neatened it up to round numbers.
Distractions drove me somewhat but more so using the umbrellas as a horizontal bounds. I wanted to show the dry in the rainy background more than the rain on the sides. Cropping solely to remove distractions – rather than to strengthen classical subject composition is an interesting consideration. Cropping for: in: and against:?