Crop! How should I edit this photo?
Some people go down the cereal aisle with determination. They’re in and out within seconds. Others stare at the columns and rows of boxes, endlessly comparing nutritional content, varieties, and unit prices. I fall into the latter category. And while I’m generally happy with my cereal in the morning, this kind of indecision can be awfully paralyzing in other contexts.
I’m still teaching myself how to shoot and edit video. Right now I’m working on what sounds like a fairly simple project: a slide show of photos I took on my recent vacation to Utah and Arizona. What’s complicating the project is that I want the final output to be in true HD quality. The good news is that my camera takes wonderful photos, and my video editing software can handle the HD format. The bad news is that HD format uses a 16:9 aspect ratio (1920 x 1080), and my camera takes photos in 3:2 (5184 x 3456). The 16:9 ratio is significantly wider than it is high (for landscapes), so to get my 3:2 photo in full frame I have to lose quite a bit off the top or bottom or both.
One option would be to simply crop from the center, taking out an equal amount from the top and bottom. I was planning to do that until I realized how serious the consequences of this non-decision can be. Take a look at the following photo from Zion National Park. The first is the original, in 3:2 ratio (I’ve resized it to 20% for presentation on the web).
Now take a look at the same image, cropped from the center to a 16:9 ratio.
It’s nice, but the canyon walls on the right look like they’re fighting to get out of the frame. They feel oppressed somehow.
Here’s another take, leaving in as much sky as possible at the top.
Now the mountains have room to breathe, but I’ve lost too much foreground. The sense of three-dimensionality is gone.
I can bring back the bottom of the photo, but …
Now my eye is drawn to the tree/shrub that’s front and center, with the canyon serving merely as backdrop.
I don’t know what the right answer is. I doubt there is one. Going through this exercise has taught me a lot about composition and editing. I never realized that every photograph contained so many boxes of cereal.
How would you have cropped the photo? Why? And how long would it have taken you to make a decision?
Comments
Comment from Michael Pahre
Time July 20, 2010 at 10:54 am
The first crop is best, although you ought to tweak it to allow slightly more blue sky (but not as much as the one following it). The blue sky might look nice, but there is nothing interesting about it. (See: Adams, Ansel and filter, polarizing.)
Have the focal point of the picture (beautiful mountain peaks) falling down from the top 1/3 of the image. That’s a widely useful rule of thumb.
Comment from Brad
Time July 19, 2010 at 8:43 pm
You could always “letterbox” it, but that’s really avoiding the issue & your question. I’d split the difference and go with the center crop but tweak it to favor the sky, giving the shrub just enough grass in front of it to give it separation and anchor it in the foreground.