Independent study: The importance of cropping

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The first major lesson for me in improving my photography has been an achilles heel for me from the beginning. I knew to crop tight, and avoid phantom arms and legs. Aside from that, I really had no idea what I was doing.

With Karen Mitchell’s tutelage, maybe one day my photos can look a little more like her proofs from Saturday’s game between Missouri and Iowa State.

So this week, I took my final proofs from Mizzou-K State on KBIA Sports Extra and tried to re-edit them, where possible.

For originals, please refer to the KBIA Sports Extra gallery. Photos are in the same order.

Tightened in as tight as possible around the dukning player. Definitely a lot cleaner this way.

I’m not sure if this version is more aesthetically pleasing, but I really enjoy the panoramic view, personally. It does remove the two half faces at the bottom of the frame in the original proof.

Minor difference between this picture and the original, as Kim English very nearly fills the entire frame as is.

This photos backdrop of photographers and the band feel distracting and perhaps unnecessary. I tightened it in around Flip as tightly as I could.

Here I removed the legs and cut out most of Justin Safford’s face on the right side of the frame. I think I prefer my original crop for this one.

In hindsight, this is one of the pictures I wish I would have cut. I brought in the corners of the frame, eliminating the basketball hoop but in the process losing some entertaining faces in the crowd, which shouldn’t be a huge problem I don’t think.

I tried to preserve the presence of a ball in the edge of the frame on the firs tcut. This time I brought the frame in around the players, and I think it has nice top right to bottom left composition.

Becuase there’s an unavoidable phantom arm and part of the arm of Laurence Bowers (21) cut off, I broke one of my own rules and intentionally cropped out a person’s arm. Because Jacob Pullen is the focus, I think this looks better, and the phantom hand is far less distracting.

Simply zoomed in on the sign and removed the distracting basket, shot clock because they have no compelling reason to be there. Now it’s cleaner, and the Antlers are more apparent.

Here I actually created a pet peeve of mine, cutting off the edge of the frame which included the chest and shoulder attached to the now phantomed limb. OTherwise, just tried to put the box out at the very middle of the frame, give those eyeballs a path to follow.

I didn’t see a ton of potential for a better crop on this one, so I just moved the bottom of the frame up a bit. I think I may like the original crop better, personally.

This one had a lot of options for recropping. Pullen is definitely the focus–we can see his face, he has the ball–and the Missouri players guarding him became sort of secondary, so one was removed completely, I brought hte bottom of the frame up to their legs, and brought the top part down to remove distractions.

I wish I had used a different picture of Frank Martin because he’s actually not all that in focus. I just zoomed in on him and removed his bench because his players don’t appear visually disturbed by his yelling at all.

Both Denmon photos were pretty much impossible to crop again. Something about photographing this guy… no change from original proof. Do you see any potential for change?

This is a weird shot to begin with, but I found myself enamored with it for some reason. Perhaps given another edit, this one wouldn’t make it. Only change: blurred out ref on the left is cropped out more so.

I could not for the life of me figure out another way to crop this picture. It’s a tad flawed in the first place because of the camera man’s sleeve in the corner, but I loved this shot because you can clearly see Pullen (0) foul Denmon (12), and it’s the first time I actually captured Denmon taking a jumper.

Minor adjustment, removing an arm from the left side of the frame. Compositionally, I wanted the four teammates to fill the entire frame.