Have you hear this before...

A real photographer doesn't crop a photo? I'm just putting around online today and I found a photographers website talking about cropping as if it's a four letter word. He also went on saying that cropping is cheating.

I might live in a bubble from time to time, but this can't be the general conscientious?

While I'm sure that even the best photographers out there DO crop at least sometimes, I would agree that it would be prefereable to frame your composition properly in your view finder and not on your computer monitor after the fact. Every time you crop you lose data - and while this is becoming less relevant as the megapixel count increases - why waste your sensor on extraneous stuff that you're just going to throw away?

No it is not the consensus at all. Photos have been cropped since the start of photography.

Joves wrote: No it is not the consensus at all. Photos have been cropped since the start of photography.

Nearly every photographer I know crops images

Not being a pro, I can safely say a "pro" photographer will do what it takes to get the shot.

Augustin wrote: A real photographer doesn't crop a photo? I'm just putting around online today and I found a photographers website talking about cropping as if it's a four letter word. He also went on saying that cropping is cheating.

Balderdash.....

Augustin wrote: A real photographer doesn't crop a photo?

...cropping is cheating.

Then the majority of famous photographers haven't been real photographers and were cheaters. It's fine for a photographer to decide on rules they are going to work by, but to disparage the rest of us for not adopting those same rules is just silly. Run away from anyone who wants to shackle your creativity to their limitations.

Spend a moment considering how many 5x7 ,8x10, 11x14, and 16x20 prints have been made from 35mm film shots. All of those must have been crops, as 35mm aspect ratio is 2:3, and makes 5x7.5, 8x12, 11x16.5, and 16x24 prints when uncropped. Look in newspapers today and yesterday. How many of the photos are 2:3 aspect ratio? Almost none.

We all like big, high quality enlargements. Taking advantage of as much of the sensor or film as possible is a very good idea, particularly with small formats like 35mm and APS-C. For much of the 20th century 35mm film wasn't so hot, and it barely passed muster uncropped, but medium and large format photographers have always enjoyed enough extra enlargement quality to be able to crop as needed.

I tend to stick with the aspect ratio of the camera I'm using, and I worry that's limiting. If I were painting I'd choose the best aspect ratio for the piece. Photographers should too. Why should I be restricted to a rectangle shape decided by the manufacturers? In my own work I consider cropping to be breaking out of the box, and I don't think I do it enough!

I also like stitching multiple exposures to make panos and squares. That's sort of the opposite of cropping. Also cheating I'm sure!

Hand holding or using a tripod I still often need to straighten photos. Whether in the darkroom or Photoshop I'm going to crop it straight. Being unable to get 100% straight photos in-camera may be darn shameful, but I'm not giving up photography because of it.

Sometimes there are technical issues that require cropping to resolve. When using a wide angle lens there is often significant distortion near the edges. If I leave a bit of room to crop I can fix the lens distortion in Photoshop. Am I cheating? I say they cheated me when they sold me a lens that couldn't see as good as my eye!

I usually try to get the crop right in-camera, but if I need to crop later to improve the photo I've got no problems doing it. When I'm shooting 35mm film or <10mp digital I don't like to crop much due to quality issues with large prints. If I'm shooting medium format or 4x5 film or 12mp+ digital I am much less concerned with it, and will crop away. With a 21mp DSLR I can crop perpendicular to the length (make a horizontal out of a vert, or vice versa), which seems like a pretty radical crop to me, and it's still a 9mp image. That will make a decent large print.

Henry Peach wrote:

Augustin wrote: A real photographer doesn't crop a photo?

...cropping is cheating.

Then the majority of famous photographers haven't been real photographers and were cheaters. It's fine for a photographer to decide on rules they are going to work by, but to disparage the rest of us for not adopting those same rules is just silly. Run away from anyone who wants to shackle your creativity to their limitations.

Yup. The ultimate purist would be shooting glass plates with a pinhole camera and making only contact prints. No "flash powder" allowed of course.

Kelly

Sounds like someone who is still in the dark ages

Anyone who says "Never" has no concept of reality.
I try to crop the composition as tight as possible but realize that different printing ratios require cropping. To allow the maximum flexibility in prints, a bit of extra space is necessary.