Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/02/12

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Subject: [Leica] Slightly OT: To Crop Or Not
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Mon Feb 12 21:25:23 2007

In the darkroom it meant if you cropped you'd get an image with no black
borders. That sure looked bad in a stack of prints where they all had black
borders. You'd want to take that print right out of the there. Hence the
high falutin ethic for no cropping from what I could tell.
If you were a commercial photographer you learned to get over it real quick.
Or did photojournalism where half the time no mater what you give them they
just print the face. A print with a black border will make them think for 3
seconds before they just crop out everything but the face.
Problem is half the time when they do that you end up with a much stronger
image. And your 11x14 air dried fiber hoity toity busy picture with the
black border looks weak next to it and it's one inch square with an 80 dot
screen on gray newsprint.

So now that I can put a black border on an image as part of the printing
menu in Photoshop I crop just like an editor might.
Relentlessly 
showing no mercy what so ever.

And when I'm done cropping I crop some more. Every time I open the image.

Mark Rabiner
New York, NY
40?47'59.79"N   
73?57'32.37"W

markrabiner.com




In reply to: Message from imagist3 at mac.com (Lottermoser George) ([Leica] Slightly OT: To Crop Or Not)