[Leica] Cropping and the whole damn thing [was: Digital cropping]

[Guy Bennett <gbennett@lainet.com>]

>Snip>>>>
>What if you had a potentially *great* shot, were it not for that
>eye-catching blob in the lower left corner - would you crop it out, leave
>it in, or just not print the neg?
><<<<<
>
>Scan, Open in Photoshop, Use Clone Tool to take the blob out.
>
>Douglas F. Landrum


So you're a cropper! Good to hear it!

I personally find the anti-cropping attitude to be a bit, well, frumpy.
While I can understand the purist's point of view 'bout not cropping one
photo-iota off the image (don't we all wish that every image was perfectly
composed?), ultimately I think this position is counterproductive, if we
agree that the goal is the final image.

The refusal to crop a picture - even if that means improving the shot -
suggests that the most significant thing about photography is the
photographer's ability to get the shot; the resulting photo is secondary.
While I'm certainly impressed by photographers like Depardon whose work is
always printed full frame, I'm no less in awe of the work of photograhers
who use cropping as a creative tool (Brassai for example), coaxing out of
an otherwise ho-hum image something fantastic, unexpected. The bottom line
for me is: it's the image that counts. In the final analysis, I'm not that
concerned with how it was made.

To the non-croppers I ask: do you refuse to revise something you've
written, sticking religiously to the first draft? Do you never season your
food once it's cooked? To come back to photography: how do you feel about
dodging, burning, split-filter printing, toning, bleaching? Are these also
unacceptable manipulations of a negative?

To paraphrase Langston Hughes:

I stay cool and dig all jive,
that's the reason I stay alive.
My motto as I live and learn is
crop and be cropped in return.

from "[Photo] Montage of a Dream Deferred

Ho!

Guy