I was thinking about what I wanted to write this week. I had just finished power washing the paint off our outdoor deck. Yeah, it took five hours. Now I get to let it dry for two weeks before sanding it down and eventually repainting it. I did it on the day it wasn’t supposed to rain … but of course it did. Well the deck didn’t care, as it was being saturated anyway, but I sure wasn’t too happy @#$%^&*(. Now it was time for me to write. My cutesy wife suggested I write about my power washing experience, but I didn’t think it would generate much interest … but I am writing about it after all … aren’t I?

OK, enough of that! So I continue to think about the last two entries I wrote concerning proof sheets. I guess there’s still some gas left in the tank, so I’ve decided I would like to discuss cropping, a subject I touched upon last time and one that continues to come up in my classes.

I know that many, including the late great Henri Cartier Bresson believe in an almost religious way that what was captured on the negative is a sacred, and if you didn’t capture the subject as it should be … well then too bad … you lose!

Here’s an excerpt from a 1958 interview with HCB:

“Interviewer: You’ve been known for never cropping your photos. Do you want to say anything about that?

HCB: About cropping? Uh, I said in that forward, we have to have a feeling for the geometry of the relation of shapes, like in any plastic medium. And I think that you place yourself in time, we’re dealing with time, and with space. Just like you pick a right moment in an expression, you pick your right spot, also. I will get closer, or further, there’s an emphasis on the subject, and if the relations, the interplay of lines is correct, well, it is there. If it’s not correct it’s not by cropping in the darkroom and making all sorts of tricks that you improve it. If a picture is mediocre, well it remains mediocre. The thing is done, once for all.”

Cropping … let me say it now… I believe it is ok and I do it.

There, I said it!

That’s right … I don’t believe it should be an article of religious faith that what is contained in the negative is sacrosanct and can only be printed full frame.   I guess that means I’m at odds with the great Master and others on this one, but I can live with that … and I think you can too without lying awake at night. Yes, there are things that keep me up at night, but this isn’t one of them!

It is absolutely essential to do your best to see and compose the image as carefully as possible when you make the picture. But let’s face it; sometimes things can be improved with cropping. Yes, I suppose it’s better if you don’t have to, if only because there is less to think about in the darkroom. But if you need to do the deed in order to create something of substance should anyone really care? I don’t.

I mean if this really bothers you, perhaps you should take a deep breath and relax.

Now, I am no HCB and most of us will never be, but we are working to create meaningful images … if not for others, at least for ourselves. Of course we shouldn’t have license to be sloppy with our vision and technique. Nevertheless, if we come up a little short during the moment of truth, but have captured something that still can be special with a little corrective surgery (based thoughtful analysis of the image on the proof sheet), then why go for it?

In short I don’t believe anyone has the perfect power of pre-visualization, not HCB or Adams or Frank or Evans or Steiglitz or Kertesz or Brandt… no one. That is why they … and we … have so few keepers relative to the total amount of exposures made. It’s also why so many of the Masters crop if necessary!

Here’s an excerpt from an essay published by Bill Brandt in 1948; it is still spot on:

“When young photographers come to show me their work, they often tell me proudly that they follow all the fashionable rules. They never use electric lamps or flashlight; they never crop a picture in the darkroom, but print from an untrimmed negative; they snap their model while walking about the room.

I am not interested in rules and conventions … photography is not a sport. If I think a picture will look better brilliantly lit, I use lights, or even flash. It is the result that counts, no matter how it was achieved. I find the darkroom work most important, as I can finish the composition of a picture only under the enlarger. I do not understand why this is supposed to interfere with the truth. Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others.”  

So when it comes time to print, why include a distracting element, or forgo the opportunity to intensify a critical compositional feature? In my opinion the only thing that matters is the final result. If cropping can strengthen an image, then by all means crop!

It’s not a sin, but pray for me if you must.