The crop factor

Prior to digital photography I nurtured my love for photography using 35mm film.

I am gratified that I had a solid grounding in the traditional dark room aesthetics and honing my skills in the art of setting and understanding shutter speed, aperture and film speed otherwise know as the exposure triangle.

But the overall the major aesthetic I picked up which I still use in my present day photography is very rarely cropping an image. For me framing the shot in camera was where I would accomplish my cropping. My decision was already made and in post production the only adjustment I would make would be correcting alignment and a very minor cropping. I regard this as part of my creative manifesto and try and not stray from it… famous last words

The greats masters of photography such as Elliott Erwitt and Henri Cartier Bresson did on occasion crop their images to achieve the final composition.

Here are some examples of how I framed in camera and the final image. As you can see the second image I did do a bit of heavy cropping,… sorry I take that back!