Composition - Cropping and Framing

The next photowalk is coming up this weekend. Seeing in Detail, and will include some surprise discussion of Composition and Framing, which can be carried out in the field, but Cropping, an underutilized photo editing tool, can also help in seeing more detail, but after the fact in post-processing.

In a photowalk a couple of years ago we tried out hand-held viewfinders to select the best composition before we took our photos. John Noble had made some wonderful adjustable viewfinders from matte board that could be adjusted to some common aspect ratios.

These aspect ratios become very important when it comes to composition because it is the frame that naturally constrains our vision and brain. It is seldom discussed in photographic compositional rules yet it is the most fundamental aspect of how the composition is perceived. These four boundary lines (I'm assuming for now the frame isn't oval or circular, and that introduces different compositional considerations) change the width and height as the aspect ratio is changed, Each proportion affects the dynamics of what is happening inside that frame.

ratio	common applications
1:1	Square eg Instagram
1:2	Panoramic
2:3	most Digital Cameras & some phones
3:4	Micro Four Thirds Cameras
4:5	Once favoured for Portraits eg 10" by 8"
9:16	Wide Screen TV, phones
10:16	Newer Wide Screen Monitors & TVs

As an exercise, mainly to convince yourself that the frame is the most important compositional aspect (and the cropping tool is one of the best ways to improve your photo). Find a photo you have taken, and then create a series of sub-photos from it but cropping to a few if not all the common ratios shown in the table above.