To Crop Or Not To Crop?

That is a question. Okay, "William," is the only thing I have in common with THAT guy. Seriously, the cropping question comes up nearly every time a photographer is post-processing an image. It may appear to be an easy question on the surface. Oh, see that cute little squirrel I captured!? Let's crop everything but the squirrel so the whole world can see how cute it is! Maybe it is that simple some of the time. But most of the time, the question requires serious thought before employing those magic scissors.

If you talk to some of the best photographers, they will tell you that it is about getting the best aesthetic for the image. There is the rule of thirds and not always centering everything and so forth. That is true in a large percentage of cases. To use as an illustration, I just posted the following image on my site. I seriously wanted to crop the image to get in tight with the flying heron. But the heron was flying by this voluptuous banyan tree that was so big and beautiful that it dwarfed the bird. Take a look:

 

What do you think? Should I have cropped this? I bet the response would be 50/50. "The bird looks so small!" and "Look at that magnificent tree!" would be two typical responses on the pro and con side. I wanted to see the entire scene with the bird AND the tree, so I did not crop.

There is a side to this that few people think about. When we view things on our screen or when we upload them to our websites, they look small and they are. We are basically looking at large thumbnails. You have to look at the image at 100% (which you cannot fit on your screen) to understand what the printed product will look like.

To make that point clearer, say a customer orders to buy this image at 30 by 20 inches. The bird will appear about six inches big on their print! That's plenty big enough to make an impact.

So yes, for me, this was about the aesthetic. I wanted the entire scene as it unfolded. Others would choose to crop it. Neither choice would be wrong.

There are other reasons to crop an image for the aesthetic side of things. If you are shooting wildlife, a great photographer once told me that the image should set the subject away from the direction the animal or bird (or bug or what have you) is looking. So if the wildlife is looking to the right, you would ideally want the subject to be in the left third of the image. The exception to this is if you have a reflection and then you want it centered.

So cropping is a means of artificially placing the subject where it should go in a classical sense. The same can be said if the animal is moving to the right or left or up and down.

But thoughts must be considered for what you hope to sell too. For example, if you are doing well selling your images as cell phone covers, having the subject to the left or right might take it right out of the visual space on the cover. Sometimes you can move it over to make it work. Other times you cannot.

Say you hope to sell duvet covers, you will not have many to sell if you crop everything down severely. Why? Because it will be too small an image to cover the area of a duvet cover. Cropping will also limit the size of a print that can be purchased.

So you see, there is a lot more involved in this decision than you thought. An artist has to please his or her aesthetic sensibilities while also balancing questions about what you want to sell and how you want to sell it. And always remember that the sold image will always be bigger than what you can fit on your screen.

To crop or not to crop? That is a decision that needs to be considered carefully on each and every image you process. To give you one last example, here follows another image I did not crop because the scene was much to beautiful to lose:

Closeups Without A Macro Lens

Some people can buy all the lenses they need for any situation. There are wide angle lenses, macro (closeup) lenses, telephoto lenses, and on and on. This is really an endeavor where you can spend money forever to get the best and latest equipment. But what if you are like me and cannot do that? Some things are still possible.

Macro lenses allow you to get extremely close to a subject and get amazingly clear and dramatic shots. They cannot be duplicated for what they do. If you really want to see the smile of a dragonfly, only a macro lens will get you there. But you can come close after much practice and trial an error with whatever lens that you have as your "go to" lens.

Closeups or macros can be achieved with non-macro lenses in one of two ways: Crop the bejeebers out of your image or get as close as you possibly can and still get good focus. The cropping angle is problematic. First, you still need to have focused really well and have gotten good detail. But, also, if you are like me and offer your images for prints, throw pillows, duvet covers, phone cases, etc., cropping can take you out of the game for some of those products and severely limit the size of a print you can offer.

One extreme example is a duvet cover. This is a large bedding item and sells for a pretty good amount of money. A severely cropped image will look like a postage stamp on an envelope for a duvet cover. I don't think anybody will buy something that looks like that.

The other, better option is to get as close as you possibly can and still focus your lens. A zoom lens is actually better for this than the standard lens that comes with your camera. But you can make either work. If you are working with a subject that does not move, that's great! The gears of a machine, flowers, texture of tree bark will stay still for you to get a good focus and take the shot.

Animals, flowers in a breeze, butterflies, insects, lizards, etc., do not sit still. They flit away,blow around, run like crazy in survival mode and you do not have time to get all fancy with your settings footwork.

I use both options I have described. On the former, I just remove things like the duvet cover from my offerings for that shot and sigh and settle on knowing that if I sell a print, it will be a smaller size. On the latter, I simply get lucky sometimes.

Here are a couple of examples from my portfolio. I'll let you guess which ones use which options above. The main thing to remember is that if you cannot afford a macro lens (like me), do not give up on this type of shot. Give it your best shot, focus the best you can and try for the best possible light.

You Don't Always Get The Shot

For every three shots I publish to my website, I probably take 150 or so shots. I cannot decide if that means I'm not very good or if I am way too picky about what I will publish. I am hoping it is the latter, but I think the truth is about the 80/20 rule. Most of the time I am very picky and sometimes I'm not very good. What really hurts is when presented with a potentially great shot and I miss it.

I remember when I first received my current camera. Like a big kid at Christmas, I took it out and I was at a park in Jupiter, Florida, and saw a raccoon swimming toward an island. It was right in front of me and it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime shots. I focused and fired off several shots and thought to myself, "I can't wait to see those when I get home!"

Well, I arrived home and uploaded the camera images and all the shots I had taken were nearly all black. It was like I was shooting in the dark. I learned two things that day. The first was to always check the in-camera replay so I can get an idea of what the shot looks like and more importantly, I spent a week watching every tutorial on the camera I could get my hands on.

I love taking action shots of animals and birds in motion. I have gotten pretty good at it. But in the past and still once in a while, I get so excited about what I am seeing that I do not breathe and make sure I fire off good shots. There were a lot of lost opportunities.

My wife always says that if I was successful on everything I see, then I would not have anything left to shoot for or--if you will--lust after. Perhaps. But there is always something new such as different behaviors, angles, light and so forth.

Still...every time I am in the field or in a blind, or sitting in my chair, I will mess up at least a few times. I have a lot of improvement in me still.

The bottom line is that in all honesty, for every great shot I take, there will be others with wings cut off or necks and heads or the focus or light will not be right. For my skill and experience level, it is part of the photography life. What really hurts is when I only had one shot to get it right because of movement or whatever. There was no second chance. Just to show you what I mean, check out this photo below of a beautiful shot of a Zebra Longwing Butterfly. It was gorgeous and the light was right...and I only had one shot and blew it.

The Baby Crane

One of the reasons we moved to this complex in Stuart, Florida, was because the first time we came to look at the place, two Florida Sandhill Cranes walked across the parking lot right by our car. We have come to love those two cranes and even named them, "Ike and Audrey." As you'll probably learn as we go along, my wife and I name pretty much name all the critters we see most often. Three months ago, much excitement ensued as we noticed that Audrey had laid two eggs and the couple were roosting at the nest in the little marsh behind our building.

Ike and Audrey are wild animals. They are not pets but they have come to trust me and often walk right by and sometimes stop to say hello wherever I am set up for the day to take pictures. But now they were going to have babies! How exciting!

Cranes incubate their eggs for 32 days, so we anxiously waited it out. Finally about two months ago, one of the eggs hatched. We were proud craneparents. Sadly, the second egg never hatched and was eventually abandoned.

The little baby crane we called, "Bailey," and it was so small and fluffy. It was a little ball of fluff with long legs. Two days after it was hatched, Ike and Audrey took the baby on its first walk (around the perimeter of the marsh).

The days went by and the walks got longer and Bailey started to grow. It was subtle at first, but after a few weeks, it had tripled in size. It was still fuzzy and dependent on his parents for food. It often sat in a shady spot while Ike and Audrey foraged. For the first month, Bailey had stumps for wings and no tail.

All that has changed and after two months, Bailey has gotten so large so fast. Nearly as tall as its mother now and feathers are starting to replace fuzz. The wing feathers were the first to come in. And then the tail and now all over. From what I've read, Bailey will stay with its parents for ten months and then be turned away to an intermediate stage. Bailey will not find a mate and continue the cycle until it is two years old.

I have chronicled the birth and development of Bailey in pictures from egg until now. It has been such a joy that I will never forget. I cannot wait to do it again next year! Here are a progression of those pictures. Enjoy!

Ike and the Limpkin

My wife and I tend to name animals we see a lot around the complex where we live. There are too many to list at the moment, but all these animals are wild but reside around where we live.

There is a family of Florida Sandhill Cranes. We first met the "husband" and "wife" over a year ago and after seeing them often, we named them "Ike and Audrey." Recently, the couple had a baby that we named, "Bailey." Bailey was sooo cute and was this little hunk of fluff with long legs. He is probably six weeks old now.

Ike is very protective of Bailey and is constantly on watch. They are used to me, so they do not pay me much mind. But if you are a threat, you better watch out for Ike!

The other day, I saw a Limpkin, which is a large wading bird with wonderful designs in its feathers. It has a long neck, long legs and loves to eat snails. The Limpkin was right beside a thicket by the stream. I headed over there with my camera.

I caught some nice shots of the Limpkin and then noticed Ike come steaming over even though the Limpkin would never eat Bailey, especially since Bailey is now almost the same size as the Limpkin! Besides, Ike's family was over 200 yards away at the time!

Between me and Ike, the Limpkin was not going to hang around to see what happened and went into the thicket below the shore level and hid in the heavy brush. I wanted to see if I could get a few more shots of it and gingerly worked my way into the brush. I found the Limpkin and managed a few shots and decided I had enough of mosquitoes buzzing my head and branches sticking into me and backed out.

When I turned around, Ike was standing there, staring at me. He was no more than three feet away and it was SO comical. He was looking at me like, "Did you get it?" or "Did you chase it off?" I laughed and said that it's still in there and it wasn't going to be chased off. That wasn't good enough for Ike and he just kept bobbing his head at me.

Finally, he must have sensed that it was all okay because he joined his family and they took off across one of the lawns. What follows is an image of the Limpkin before it went into the brush and of a butterfly that was also in the thick brush once I got in there.

Welcome to the new blog for Natural Florida Photography

Greetings!

My name is William and Natural Florida Photography is me. I specialize in nature photography with my earlier work coming from Maine and most of the last couple of years' images here in Florida. Birds and other wildlife, wildflowers and wetland scenes are my specialty and with my images you can buy prints, stationary, phone covers, beach items, bath products, bedding, home decor and even yoga mats! I am no stranger to blogging and have blogged on various subjects since 1995! I hope you enjoy this one.

I will basically talk about my experiences while taking my images and I promise not to bore you with what equipment I used or the F-stop or ISP or other such things you won't care about. What you will care about is the images and whether or not they come to life for you.

If you would like to see the full measure of my photos, you can click here. Thanks and stay tuned!