One thing that strikes me in critique section is the high amount of "I would crop it that way" kind of suggestions given.

Are we such lousy photographers that we are not able to approach our subjects correctly and frame it/her/him the right way ?

I am not saying that further cropping is a not valid editing option (of course it can be) but I wonder why such a common suggestion which most of the time is motivated in isolating the subject in a nice way - though of course there might be other reason to crop, more related to composition balance. I believe it has to do with our tendency, as a viewer, to focus on a very single subject in image. I think the immediate recognition of subject matter is 1. what we first want to feel and 2. pushes us to give it more prominence if that feeling is unclear - be it at the expense of other objects that would then immediately fall under the 'distracting' category.

In other words I find that more than often we tend to overlook what the context may add to the image in depth, juxtaposition, aesthetic, mood etc... but also that we give few credit on how the distance to the subject can be a decisive element of composition.

Any thought ?

Not sure we overlook that - actually many cropping-proposals are exactly aimed at emphasizing mood, impact et cetera by framing the context - not only the subject - in a more balanced way.

Lars :-)

Cropping is nothing new and not the devils work... Here are a few negatives by Paul Almasy, who was something like a Salgado of the Fifties:


As you see, he wasn't scared of drastic cropping, and if the photographers of yesteryear weren't then why should we. What is often overseen in cropping advice is that a cropped image needs to be blown up to a viewable size, i.e. the smaller image resulting after cropping will not have the same quality and resolution of the original. In the webgallery world, if you have an original of 900*600 and crop it to let's say 750*400, you have to reset the size to have a presentable size (unless a thumbnail is big enough :)). The resolution and resulting quality loss remains even if you crop the original file. Maybe there is a smart way to bypass this, I don't know.
Less of a problem for full-frame images than for photos taken with a cropped sensor (because it has more details, so the quality loss is not so bad - but still noticable).

Hi Jacques,
interesting question.

It seems so, that a lot of viewers have problems with "empty spaces".
May be it is a question of viewing habits, maybe the pictures in question were not properly balanced.
Intended integration of empty space is a powerful element of some compositions.
On the other side, I have seen a lot of pictures, where the empty space made no sense.

Frank