L-A: Ahh, crop!

• Manja Maksimovič

I admit, I often mistake crop for that other cr.p word, and yet it can be so useful. But trust me: I’m far from one to learn it from.

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Today there will be a bit more photos than usually. Each one will be showed twice, you see, or even three times, with a different crop. (Now that I think of it, isn’t crop the same as yield? From the fields?)

That said, sometimes even I am not sure whether the cropped photo is an improvement over the original. Well, I’m almost sure but I have my doubts, as about everything I do with photography.

My let’s-call-them-photo-skills have been developing spontaneously over the course of my blogging and only you are the judge.

Here are sixteen times when I had to crop the original photo, sometimes slightly, sometimes a bit more heavily. First always comes the original as taken, followed by a cropped and slightly edited or straightened version or two.

Probably it’s best if you click on a photo and continue horizontally, now with captions. If you have another idea how to crop any of these, don’t be shy to tell me about it in a comment.

All photos are from last May. We spent my birthday week in Ljubljana (first eleven examples), where I should be right now too, a weekend in Rome (last four pairs), and a day in Porto Santo Stefano (featured photo). Such luxury.

  • It was a cold and rainy week in Ljubljana.
  • I decided to crop the bottom and leave that line on top.
  • I noticed some potential in the middle.
  • So I cropped it.
  • I didn’t wish to remove much.
  • So I cropped just a little. I wonder if others would crop more.
  • Here I was annoyed by the whiteness above.
  • So I cut it, and left “music”.
  • I liked how she busted me, and the water.
  • I had to cut the top of the fountain.
  • Same fountain. Original.
  • I was cropping left and right.
  • And then noticed the guy on the bench who wished to stay in.
  • This one was tricky.
  • First I cropped out the sky.
  • Then I realised that the door must go too (gasp!).
  • One more door. So many uneven lines.
  • They are still there. Only slightly better, I’m afraid.
  • I was distracted by that ceiling.
  • So it had to go.
  • I didn’t like the bottom.
  • So I cut it. Still annoyed at the bottom right part.
  • Pretty fascinating architecture. With so much road.
  • It had to go, but now I’m wondering if some of it should stay.
  • A hop to Italy. Uneven and sloppy.
  • I made it symmetrical.
  • A as in anarchy in Rome.
  • I cropped just a bit of clutter off the edges.
  • An obvious obstacle.
  • Removed. I wonder if the car lights should go too.
  • Had to fix this leaning house.
  • I left this bottom edge in on purpose. And now I’m wondering…
  • Such an excess. Just right for me.
  • But some excess had to go. Still not quite happy.

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For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Patti at P. A. Moed: Cropping the shot

46 thoughts on “L-A: Ahh, crop!”

    1. Thank you, Equinoxio. I often see that people choose to crop more boldly whereas I prefer to gently tweak. But not nearly every time. I look at the edges and if nothing disturbs my eye, I let it be. These were chosen on purpose.

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  5. Good job in cropping and documenting what you did.

    Regards, Teresa

    BTW Thanks for your help last week. I won’t make my photos too small now. Thanks again Manja.

    Liked by 1 person

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      1. That’s true, Manja. I just didn’t want to run out of space again. My son told me to use Blogger because it has unlimited space. Have you tried that?

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Well, you were most diligent, but there were times when I didn’t think you needed to crop, because there wasn’t anything extraneous to remove,..just saying! 😊

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    1. Interesting and good to know. Thanks, Sue! I don’t crop every time and every photo, most photos I choose to post because I like the crop already. 😀 I’m lazy like this. But these were chosen on purpose.

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  11. Your crops really work when you’re straightening images and bringing the subject into clearer focus. I’m always straightening mine! Some of your foreground shots also worked when you cropped out the foreground–especially in the one with the canal. I like the one of the staircase, too. It’s really so much more impactful without the extra bit of ceiling. Nice!

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  12. Now I know I definitely do not have a photographer’s eye!! All the pictures looked beautiful for different reasons depending on what caught my eye, but I honestly couldn’t tell if something was not straight or if something was enhanced. Sigh….I will just be an admirer and not a suggester for this one! Lovely work!

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    1. Haha, oh, Irma, it’s lovely that you can see photos in this way, and love them for what you can see in them, no matter how imperfect or crooked. If we all had photographer’s eye, all photographers would be blind. 😉 Thank you!!

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    1. Thank you so much for your opinion, Judith. You are one of most careful croppers. Good to know about the first pair. I was first disturbed by that wall edge on the right and then took the bottom out too.

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  15. Love your reasoning with yourself when cropping! Most of them I really like – the canal for example really worked out well. Some I think was good enough as originals. I am lazy too…and many times I feel the first image really was better than my second…

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  16. For me, all the crops improve upon the original.  The various other edits help too.

    I prefer the tighter crop of the one with the fountain being viewed by the woman with a blue bag.  A photo that emphasizes the man with the mask could well have been poignant, but his image is small and and he is looking away from the main subjects.

    I would keep the car lights.  They don’t contribute, but they come with the nice curve of magenta flowers beside the car.  Cropping out the lights would straighten the curve.

    I have often felt the same frustration as in the final caption.  Plants do not move fast when there is no wind, but somehow they often manage to make it hard to compose an image.

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    1. Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, Mellow. 🙂 I’m glad that you agree with my crops. That man doesn’t have a mask, this was taken last year, no masks yet then. I was kind of sorry to cut him out but I suppose I must. Plants know that crops mean they will be eaten. 😀

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  18. For each image I though about the sort of crop I would do before seeing yours and, more often than not, they were very similar! Are we both bad photographers, are we both good photographers, or are images not quite as open ended as one thinks?

    In some cases I would also remove stuff (e.g. power cables, traffic signs) but I know you think that’s worse than drowning kittens, so I won’t go there 🙂

    One thing you could try though is perspective correction (e.g. straightening the converging building lines one gets when pointing the camera upwards). No kittens are hurt, promise.

    – Verne

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    1. Ohh, yes yes, this is the one I need! Perspective correction! It’s still cheating, if you ask me, but sometimes I’m soooo annoyed at all the uneven lines that I’d be happy to do it. Actually, it sounds like something that the world needs as such. 😉

      As it is, my faithful Windows Photo Gallery, the only editing tool I use, has nothing of the sort. The only other program I have is Gimp. I opened it once or twice and just gawked at all the options and quickly closed it again. I bet it’s good for this kind of corrections though. It’s in Slovenian, for some reason. I need to find the right tool and figure it out.

      Let me tell you – just the fact that you’d crop them very similarly calms me considerably, Verne. I know that your photos are probably the most precise ones I’ve seen. 🙂 Thanks so much!

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      1. Yup, just checked, Gimp does indeed have a perspective correction tool!

        Seems similar to the software I use: you draw a couple of lines over stuff that should be parallel and fancy math takes care of the rest.

        True, it can be used for evil (I sometimes straighten things that weren’t exactly straight to begin with) but in most cases you’re just correcting a distortion caused by the lens.

        – Verne

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