001 Photo Cropping

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Selecting a good crop on your photographs is one of the essential techniques of professional photographers, designers and scrapbookers. Cropping a photo well actually takes a lot of thought, and is often the first clue as to the experience level of the artist involved. Most often novice photographers include too much distracting background information, but are also apt to cut off legs tops of heads and other relevant information.

The first thing to think about when deciding on how to crop is what is important to this photograph. What do you want the viewer to see? If you are taking a photo with a camera you use the words "framing the photo" to determine the initial crop. In the photo above you will see how I choose to frame the image. As you can see I wanted to include the other ball player and the corn-field in the background. I was also limited by the amount of zoom my camera allows, so I was unable in this situation to crop in closer to the subject. This was not a very good "crop".

Try to determine the path of the viewers eye. My eye goes to the ball player in the foreground then is pushed left and off the photo because of the direction that he is facing and the movement of his arms to the left. The ballplayer in the background is an afterthought and adds little to the photo. Another problem with this photo is that it is divided in half by the dark grass contrasted by the light infield. (often the horizon line will cause this type of a problem in a landscape).

Above, I used the rule of thirds to help crop this photo. Which is simply to divide your photo into nine equal squares and place your subject on one of the lines or where the lines intersect. I placed this subject (below) on the vertical line on the right. I would have moved it over a little farther but there is no more image to the left. Notice that all three boxes on the left are filed with background only. This empty area will hold the viewers eye in the photo and keep it from being pushed out of the image. All of the area outside these nine boxes are irrelevant to the photo and only distract the viewer from what is important.

Above is the final crop. The eye goes right to the subject, the movement of the player pushes your eye to the left and the background keeps your eye from going off the page. Notice that the photo is no longer divided in half by the infield line. This is much better than the original crop. The only additional item that bothered me in this photo was the fence-post coming out of the top of his head. I decided to remove the post using my image editing software. (See the top of this page for the edited image.)

Tips on Cropping:
• The best time to crop is before releasing the shutter (get closer to the subject)
• Turn the camera to fit the subject (Horizontal or Vertical)
• Be careful not to cut off reliant information (capture the whole subject)
• Use the rule of thirds as a guide
• Be aware of how the image balances between light and dark areas.
• Try not to divide the photo in half with horizon line or other lines.
• Use the background to hold the eye in the photo don't crop-in too close.
• Be careful not to leave slivers of contrast on the edge of your photo.
• Don't be afraid to straighten lines up in the photo by rotating before the crop
• Leave more space on the side that the subject is facing.
• Try your best keep your background clean (not busy)

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