..Most of us have cropped things sometime in our lives. It may not have been in a photograph, but we still cropped. Cropping is simply cutting out unwanted space. Have you ever cutted a shape out of paper in school. That is a form of cropping. Luckily in photography this can be accomplished by lowering or raising your enlarger, so that only the part exposing the paper is printed.

..Cropping Methods

..Improving Composition - Deciding where precisely where to place your subject in the frame, can spare you the frustration and embarassment of improperly placed subjects. You can also move the subject around the frame while using the rule of thirds.

..Making photos more dramatic - You can turn a boring square into an interesting set of lines by rotating the image vertically or horizantally. For example you can take a perpendicualar telephone pole and rotate it slightly to make it lean.

..Give meaning - Emphasize on a certain portion of the frame. Cut out unwanted space and help give the picture meaning. Below in the photograph of the dog, we cut out part of the bench to emphasize more on the dog.

 

 

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