crop_bef

crop_aft

(click on the pictures to enlarge them)

The lower picture has been cropped from the upper one, but nothing else has been changed. The difference this bit of cropping makes is huge. The area containing the sun has been increased so that we can see more of the lovely gold colour (which is what I wanted), but the nicely coloured clouds, the blue sky and the two people at the bottom have been lost. Of course, if we all had monitors 80 cm * 50 cm, we could see the pictures full size without the need to crop. But since that isn’t going to happen occasional cropping is required, unfortunately. The small size of these monitors we use is a curse, sometimes.

I don’t like chopping up photographs in this way, because it’s a crutch to lean on that prevents my learning how to use the camera properly. Photography is about capturing a moment, and when you change the captured image afterwards, it becomes less about that moment and more about how you can fix afterwards the mistakes made during the moment. It removes some of the necessity for learning and improvement. So, I do it as little as possible.

The same comments apply, but even more strongly, to fiddling with the colours and brightness afterwards.

But all of this is just my opinion, and I am aware that different people have different things they want to get out of their photographs.

Cheers, Tom.