Jun07 0

The Photography Tip of the Week #012

Photography Tip of the Week 012 (audio)
CZC
Crop, Zoom, Closer… repeat. Not unlike an exercise program or the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle there is a little known chant amongst photographers. Many of them don’t know it as such but it’s the part of the composition mantra that is decided right before the button is pressed. This mantra determines the frame you choose for your photo. You’ve already chosen your subject, texture, colors, forms, light and now you are ready to take your shot, how do you frame your photo? This is the most basic of questions, but so many people have a hard time with the decision. I feel this is because they have never taken the time to discover the differences in these different frame methods.

For this little test I have used a yard ornament on my porch with some red mud throughout. I put a towel in the background so you can see some of the depth of field effects from each type of shot. First we’ll take a look at the overall scene. It’s simple and uninspiring, but it will work fine for our purposes.

Taking this image we can just do a simple crop to pull out the element we want. There’s no special magic here. We are taking a large image and getting a smaller image out of it. In this case the photo is quite a bit smaller in resolution but is still of high enough quality for a reasonable 5×7 print. As far as I’m concerned, this is bad. It’s good that I can pull out a photo from this, but I don’t have as much information to work with and my print size is very limited. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing bad with cropping as long as it is used to enhance the photo. I just prefer to crop only a little bit of the image away. When you crop a large amount, you really aren’t gaining much.

Next we’ll take an image from the same location, but we’ll zoom in on the fox. From this vantage point we now have a high resolution photo with the subject we intended. Due to the depth of field the towel is blurred as well as a bit of the surrounding ground. Many point and shoot cameras won’t have as much blurring, but it will still be there. This is easily superior to taking a wide angle photo and cropping out a little section of it.

Finally we’ll just get in really close. You have the same attention on your subject, but now you have much more in focus. There is quite a bit less blurring due to the difference in depth of field. There is also a difference in “feel” for getting in closer over zooming. Which one is better, zoom or closer? That depends on the look you want to achieve. You many be constrained as to how close you can get to your subject so you’ll have to zoom. For me, I find it best to get as close as possible and leave the zoom to times when I need to blur out the background or when I just can’t get in as close as I want.