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SEEING “Cropping is the one editing function that we pretty much apply to almost every photograph that passes through Lightroom. Effective cropping is critically important for composition, setting the mood, and even optimizing photos for sharing on social media.”
I won’t mention the source of that quote but it’s from a post I saw a few days ago. Tips and tricks kinda thing you know? And the tips were fine as far as tips go, I won’t fault the article for this. But those are the opening lines, the setup, the introduction...and that I take issue with. In fact it made me a little mad. Years ago I watched a photographer, during the editing phase of a workshop, crop a 3:2 street image into a 2:3 sliver of itself. And I watched and waited until it was done...then we looked at the results—probably 1.5 megapixels at this point. Not great, but certainly a better composition. And the advice I offered? Learn from this. But don’t learn to crop: learn to compose. There’s nothing wrong with cropping, but the idea that it’s a function applied to “almost every photograph that passes through Lightroom” is a deeply flawed lesson to teach. Especially to beginners. If you’re cropping every image then you’re not composing well in the first place. I’m not talking about small edge adjustments or straightening a horizon line…we all miss stuff from time to time. And yes, there are famous examples of iconic images that were massively cropped (a lot of images from Robert Frank’s Americans for examples); as in everything else, dogma is an enemy—what matters are the final results. But statements like these suggest in-camera composition will rarely be right. That photographers are merely capturing an approximation of the frame, to later be fixed in post.
No.
Just, no. Because while the ability to do this is important and a part of our toolset, it is also crucial, in my opinion, to strive for “mood” in the field. To reach for effective composition, not effective cropping. I may sound like a purist here...but it’s about engagement. It’s about reaching a state of awareness, while we’re capturing the world, that will lead to a deliberate approach to our craft and a connection to our subjects. There will always be moments that surprise and catch us unprepared; that exhilarating chaos that drives so many of us. And those images may indeed require more extreme tweaking to come to life. But as I told that student many years ago: the capture wasn’t really there to begin with was it? You didn’t see it. Learn that lesson and move on. Moments are infinite.
The flow of images never stops.
Our job is to be ready.
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