TO CROP OR NOT TO CROP ?

original full frame 35mm / Jonathan and Natalia's wedding 16th May 2009

This new paragraph is dedicated to the Cropping Manipulation. To crop an image isn't new, and has in fact been used for a long time. You can find a famous example through the art of Rodchenko mixing various stills of events cropped and assembled for political propaganda means. Cropping has been continuously used by the advertising industry to enhanced its delivery - one image, one message. It is about the clarity of reading. Same with paparazzi photography. How many horrible quality pictures have we seen in newspapers of a tiny part of the image blown up 10 times and where sometimes we cannot even read the image! Watch again Antonioni's Blown Up. A lot of photographers will always crop the image for various reasons. The shoot didn't allow them to get the perfect angle, or the equipment wasn't appropriate, or an undesired element interfered with the right shot. That can happen as we all know and we try to make most of the original we had previously in mind.

cropped vertically.

Nevertheless, there is a branch of Photography which never really followed that path, and that is precisely Reportage photography. Their policy is to show the public exactly the whole picture as a statement. They would use the key line way of printing ( Search for american photographer James Nachtwey) The printer would file carefully the negative holder in order to print a little bit more that the picture. That tiny extra space would diffuse straight light and create a black line which then proved the authenticity of the full picture. 100% straight from the neg to the paper - no artificials ! I am pretty sure most people remember those prints. It was a question of honour and pride to be able to capture all the elements within a single frame, a single click. Nowadays softwares propose this framing option as an artifice, and you can pretend to present the original full image and knowing it is not true. This policy is not so used anymore and the pressure from the medias is too strong. That is why nowadays you won't see that many pictures from auteurs as their images would be given an other meaning because of this cropping business. Medias rely more on pictures librairies nowadays where everything look perfect. It is cheaper to buy and easier to organize their agenda and layout. There is no room for improvisation and genuine raw beauty anymore I am afraid.

cropped landscape.

Doing Reportage in its true sense is to deliver the original image the way you composed it at that time, as simple as that. But to achieve such a result requires knowledge and experience. Amateur photographers will eventually sometimes succeed either by luck or hard work. Nevertheless, doing it with consistency and regularity requires professional skilIs. I guess and hope that couples to be still expect to work with a good professional wedding photographer.
I welcome you to visit different wedding photographers' websites and search for the authenticity of the shots displayed. Most of them are cropped, meaning that they didn't get the right shot and try to make most of it. I personally feel it is a shame as you may want to get the full original quality of the materials for your families. Of course, you still can frame a cropped image but you can feel that something is missing, that there is something fake about it. The intention and quality matters here especially when you are dealing with weddings.


cropped square

Few ways of cropping always work and enhance a poor image such as landscape and square format. They invite you in an other dimension in space and time. They deal with nostalgia and wider space. Landscape or long strip photography has been used for many years and deals with our child imaginary vision of tales. Cinema format is going back to that wide concept, like the classics of the 60's or book illustrations of the the early XXth Century. Square is a bit more recent when most photographers would use Rolleiflex in the 50's and 60's. This format is perfect for portraiture for its lens beauty and distance with subject. It has been used obviously in various ways but it has something strong, direct, a one to one mental approach.

Conclusion: Reportage aims to deliver the real original picture. Bad Photography generally engenders the act of cropping. New online digital book layouts encourage it as it aims to be public friendly and show people that they also can be as good as professionals. Should we go with the easy way, or should we learn the hard way ? Do we need to rely on professional photographers anymore ? Is the quality going up or down thanks to digital ? That will be discussed in an other chapter...