Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/05/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My pproach to cropping depends on the kind of subject matter I'm going for. If it sits still long enough for me to examine the composition and ask myself all the required aesthetic questions, I prefer to crop to to the edges. I came of age in the era of the film carrier and rat-tail file as well. However, if there's action involved (kids, animals, fleeing felons or my wife), I'm inclined to shoot for the moment and not worry too much about the framing except to make sure I've got enough free space around the main subject to clean it up the cropping later if I have to. That's not to say that you shouln't worry about the composition in an active situation - the better you get the more insinctive it becomes, and the less you'll need to crop later. But in order of importance, my ranking is subject, timing, light, cropping. Cropping you can fix later - the others you can't. So, I don't think it's laziness as much as concentrating on what's important. Now if I was pointing my camera at an inanimate but well-lit clump of rocks and ferns and not worrying about the cropping, I might feel just a teeny bit lazy. Paul