“Crop till it hurts.”

I don’t remember when I first heard that advice. Let’s just say it’s been a while…

I think it was applied to sports photography and the impact of zooming in for maximum impact.

Some purists (and photojournalists) frown on cropping after the fact; they proselytize framing the shot in-camera and not adding or modifying anything in post.

Not being bound by those constraints, however, I find that when shooting with a prime (as opposed to a zoom) lens, I can’t always get as close to a subject as I would like; so I use the cropping tool in Lightroom to move in. Of course, how much to crop is purely subjective. 

When photographing these flamingos at the zoo, I got yelled at for getting too close.

But it wasn’t close enough, as far as I was concerned. So, I got closer after the fact, by eliminating some elements that didn’t enhance the image and zeroing in to create a portrait of a single flamingo.

Cropping even tighter, the image reveals the beauty of this bird’s plumage.

 I think the tight crop makes for a more interesting photo.

 In some cases, cropping allows you to focus on the primary subject. I was fortunate to capture two Galapagos tortoises in one image, but I thought the one in the foreground might be more impactful alone. 

Not a bad portrait of a single tortoise, IMHO, but I was happier with the result when I cropped even more dramatically to reveal the texture of this vertebrate’s skin.

In some cases, like when photographing wildlife (even in a zoo), cropping allows you to view a subject in greater detail.

This is as close as I could get with my 100mm lens to EleEle, a female Siamong Gibbon at the Honolulu Zoo.

And here is the dramatic portrait I was able to create by cropping in tightly on the previous photo, converting it to black-and-white, and then opening up the shadows.

BTW, it certainly helps if your subject is in sharp focus and copying Rodin’s Thinker.

Interestingly, cropping works on human subjects, too. 

This horizontal shot of Marissa, a local banker and part-time model, works well, but I prefer the version below, where I cropped in tight, re-framed her face, punched up the color, and turned it into a magazine-ready portrait.

I think in the end, purists have an argument for straight photography, but I like to use all the tools in the shed to make my subjects look great.