[Leica] Cropping dilema

[feli2@earthlink.net]

Alright, picture this.

This may be a little difficult with me not being able to post anything since I don't have a site, yet, but please bear with me.
This is more of a ethical question than a technical.

I have a shot that I grabbed this spring of two war demonstrators shoving each other in an intersection, during rush hour traffic (night time). They are a little to the left of frame center and take up about 3/5th of the frame height. About 8 ft behind them there is a city bus bearing down on them. It pretty much looks like one of them is going to end up under the bus (which almost happened).

Here's the problem. As it is the shot is weak. The level/wide framing makes the action fall flat. So, I scanned it into Photoshop to play with the cropping.

First I tilted it -12 degrees clockwise. That really increased the dynamic of the shot. It increases the sense of everyone being off balance and the danger of the bus. (bus is traveling left to right)

Then I cropped it tighter. The top of the bus and the demonstrators feet are on the edge of the frame. Now the framing is nice and tight, increasing the tension.

Here is the problem. In order to crop the frame this tight with a  -12 degree tilt, I run out of image area in the far corners. On the top of frame we are talking about black night sky and grain. In the lower corners a little piece of pavement. On an 8x10 print I would estimate these "triangles" to be 1.5 inches wide and maybe 1/2 inch tall.

Is it ethical to fill these triangles in with some night sky and pavement? Is that the same as doing some burning in the darkroom? Is it the same as restoring a scratch on a negative? Filling in the corners will not change the content, action, circumstances or meaning of the photo. It's more of a technical fix.I know that news photos are constantly cropped. Sometimes for the worse, since a crop can change the context under which something took place. But that would not be the case with these fixes. Still I'm very torn if this is an ethical thing to do.

It would be great to hear opinion on this. Ted? Slobodan?


thanks,


feli

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