Digital Envisions

One of the most important things in taking a great picture is where to crop your subject. In the industry there are certain standards: full length, 3/4 length, close ups, etc. What are the factors for deciding what stays in the photo and what is cropped out? This article is deals with different methods for cropping your images to make your portraits look more professional and more attractive.

There are two methods to crop a photo: cropping in camera, and cropping in postproduction. The first method, cropping in camera, is the preferred method of cropping, as it takes advantage of your camera’s maximum resolution per image. As you take a picture, you decide what to leave in what to leave out by properly framing your subject. So if you want to take a picture of just your subjects face, you are just focusing on the face, not the whole body with the plan of later cropping the picture on the computer. This way your image has the original resolution that your camera recorded.

Unfortunately, sometimes this isn’t possible, and that is why we also have the second method of cropping, cropping during postproduction. Sometimes you may find yourself, shooting pictures of a very fast event at a wedding; things may be happening so quickly that you don’t have the time to properly compose the image.

People showing off their dance moves at the reception, or the female guests knocking each other over trying to catch the bouquet, or the men bumping each other reaching for the garter are all examples of very fast action where you may not have time to crop in camera. This is alright though. Focus on trying to capture the action as best you can with the knowledge that you will later be able to crop these images on the computer. As you know some resolution will be lost but better that than missing the moment during a fast action sequence.

Now that it is clear which method of cropping to use at which situation, we can discuss how we decide to leave parts of the subject in frame, while cropping other parts out. To start, DO NOT crop a subject at the joints, i.e., ankles, waist, knees, etc.

We all know the full length shot, which is the whole body of the subject with nothing cut off, the next type of portrait is the 3/4 length. This is a portrait where you have the subject’s thigh as the bottom edge of the photo, and a small space above the subject’s head as the upper edge.

Following this is the portrait referred to as the head and shoulder length. This portrait will consist of the bottom edge being the upper chest of the subject, and again the upper edge will be a bit of space above the subject’s head.

Lastly, and most complicated, there are close ups of the face. Portraits of a subject’s face you might have seen online or in print tend to be more artistic, and therefore the rules for cropping are not as rigid. For facial close ups, I suggest you take a look at different examples, and decide which type of cropping goes best with your style of photography.

I hope these tools will give you a better idea of how to crop your subjects at your next event. Best of luck!

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