Cropping

Explanation

For this post, I want to do something a bit different. Instead of focusing too heavily on how I came to take these pictures, I want to do a comparison between 2 sets of pictures, the theme of which is cropping. I think that a lot of what people are trying to do when they "zoom" in on something is that they're attempting to crop into what's most important. For the first of these two pictures, the one with the pigeon, this was my express intent. I knew that the focal length was going to render the pigeon small in the frame but I wanted to show how simple cropping can both change a picture's focus and also do so without "zooming" in. The second picture didn't necessarily have this intent but it's another picture that is served better with a crop.

Before I get into cropping and these pictures too much, let's define what I mean by cropping vs "zooming".

Cropping a picture is simply removing parts of that picture. The resulting picture is smaller in size and often times suffers in quality when viewed at the same size as the original picture, especially if blown up. In a digital picture, this is because there are the same number of pixels as that specific cropped section. As a result, when viewed at a blown up size, it's easier to notice individual pixels, this effect increases as you crop to a smaller and smaller portion of the original picture. One thing to note here is that on phones with only one lens, it's common that all "zooming" is actually done by effectively cropping digitally. This is why you might notice that when you "zoom" with your phone's camera that the quality degrades.

"Zooming" is a bit different. Assuming optical zoom, it would be more accurate to call this increasing the focal length that a picture is taken at. If your goal is to simply focus on a specific object with nothing in the background, "zooming" and cropping can be quite similar with "zooming" generally yielding clearer pictures. However, it's important to recognize that by "zooming" and changing the focal length, you are actually affecting images in a different way. Specifically, "zooming" in (and increasing the focal length) causes things in the background to appear closer, compressing the space between the foreground and background. This can be used very effectively but can also cause pictures to look quite odd if done unintentionally. In regards to phone cameras with multiple lenses, as you "zoom" you might click into using a different focal length. When this happens, you might notice that the image quality increases again as you're no longer cropping but using an entirely new lens with a longer focal length. However, by doing so, you're also getting that compression effect.

At some point, I'll put up a comparison and a specific post for changing focal length and its effect on pictures. For the time being, it's enough to recognize that cropping and "zooming" can be used similarly but can have different effects based on the circumstances.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the first pair of pictures with the pigeon. As I said earlier, I intentionally took this picture with the intent to crop it. I knew that given the focal length I was using, the pigeon would never be large in the frame when viewed at full size. I also knew that there was no real way to force the pigeon to be more visible and obvious, even though it's smack dab in the middle of the picture. However, by cropping, even if it's not completely centered, it's much more obvious and visible. Now I probably should have moved a bit so I could create separation between the pigeon and the building in the background. As it stands the pigeon and that building share the same space, both physically and in terms of color so there's little separation. However, I think if I had moved to a position where the pigeon is more against the sky, the sign wouldn't be as visible and readable. Ultimately there's a tradeoff there and I wasn't too fussed about pushing it that way.

In regards to the second pair of pictures, this was not an intentional choice to crop when taking the picture originally. I went in with a specific image, with the girl and the falling petals and quite frankly I succeeded at taking the picture that expressed that image. However, when I got the picture back, I also thought that it felt a bit too busy. The girl feels too far away with the bush in the foreground and also too small vertically. By cropping away significant portions of the picture, the image is clearer and details can be appreciated more readily. Additionally, unlike the first pair where the effect of "zooming" would largely be negligible, "zooming" could drastically change this picture. It's nice that the trees and light posts are separated spatially, it's clear that things further away are, in fact, further away. Part of this is exaggerated because this picture was taken with a wide angle lens. Honestly, the most obvious thing to change by "zooming" in would be that the fence in the background would appear closer, which would be a pretty large disservice in this case.

Hopefully, that helps in recognizing the kinds of things simply cropping a picture can do to affect clarity. Personally, I find that cropping is the only sort of editing I want to do on pictures. Partially, this is because it's something I can factor into the process of turning an image into a picture. The image I'm thinking of requires this specific and narrow edit. If that's the intention, I'm not rewriting the picture that exists with that edit, it's another step of transforming that already understood image into the picture that I was trying to express. It's definitely a fine line to tread, as I want to appreciate the pictures I take largely as is and not try to chase the kind of perfection that editing can empower. Even in the second case where cropping cleaned up the picture, I don't feel much worse about the original picture. As I said, it fulfills its intent, if marginally worse. In general I wouldn't create or post that cropped image except in this case because I think it works to service my point for this post. As a note, I will not add in any cropped image into the "roll" posts.