Tech Tuesday - Composing for the Crop

We've all been there... We take an amazing image, the client loves it and wants to order a print.  Unfortunately, the size they want to order requires cropping the image.  What to do?  What part of this image do you leave out?    Although you'll never really escape this dilemma, you can minimize how often you're confronted with it by composing for the crop.

It's really just a matter of being familiar with the size of images your camera creates and popular crops that clients might request.  I know that if I want to print an 8x10 image from one of my photos I'll need to crop a fair amount from the top and/or bottom.

After having to make too many hard decisions as to what I'd have to crop (Top of head or hand on hip?  Head or feet?), I decided I'd better start leaving myself some wiggle room.  Now I routinely shoot with some empty top and bottom space in most of my photos.  I still find myself shooting tight at every shoot, but for as many tight photos I get I try to shoot just as many "loose" that can be cropped without losing anything vital.

If it's really that easy to just leave a little extra space around your subjects when you shoot, why not shoot that way all the time?  The primary reason for me is that the closer you get to your subject, the more defocused your background gets.  That extra foot or so of distance between me and my subject can make a huge difference to the look of the background.  Another reason is just habit.  When you get into the habit of creating the image you want to see in the viewfinder, it's really hard to change your style and create an image you wouldn't typically create.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: "I'm not going to compromise my artistic integrity by not taking the perfect photo in-camera."  That's fine.  I respect that.  You're going to have to decide whether you want to crop your perfect photos or not sell any prints.

What if you don't want to have to make that decision?  Just display your images digitally where they don't have to be cropped.  Or, sell prints that are sized to accommodate the popular digital formats.  Instead of ordering an 8x10 and cropping, order an 8x12 and don't crop!  The only tough thing about this is finding frames to fit your prints.

In the end, it's up to you to decide how you want to shoot and if you want to change your style or not, but always be aware of the consequences.  There is no perfect solution.  You can frame properly and crop, you can frame loose and have a more defined background, you can not print your images or you can print them in sizes that are harder to frame but don't require cropping.  Good luck!

Here are a few images to illustrate what I'm talking about:

In these images I left enough room for me to crop an 8x10 and still show Lexie's hands and chains.  Notice how much extra background I get in the image.

In these images I composed in-camera pretty much the way I wanted the image to look.  See what happens when I crop for an 8x10?  I lose her hands and chains.