The case for cropping..
Sometimes, when zooming in on a photo to delete pesky dust spots (that reside now not just on my lens or mirror, but even inside my camera); I coincidentally see a different picture within the picture. It can completely alter the narrative.
“Real photographers don’t crop..” said someone.
“Should I care?”, says me.
The famous photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, was almost apologetic about the the few photos he had to crop! One of his greatest photos- “Place de l'Europe, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare”, is one of only a few photographs he cropped.
The one downside to cropping is loss of resolution if one intends to do a larger print. Best would be to see the crop/composition in camera, rather than after the fact.
Sometimes though, I simply don’t see it in the moment! Learning Я Me!
Some examples..
The next three are another example. I’d been eyeing out this scene for a while when driving past. This time the light was great, but I was on the far side of the highway.. not ideal. I was drawn to the strange tractor come-podium, with our national flag. Then I noticed the bath tub, so weird and out of context. And the the last crop, sans both tractor and tub, just a pole and peaks, is probably my favourite- clean and minimal.