Mark, Because I compose "loosely," I crop everything. Depending on how I'm gonna use the final image, I have different specific crops I employ. Ever use a Scale o Graph on a polaroid? Thank-You, Mike
Pretty much every photo! I mainly try to get the horizons straight when cropping but hearing about all these overlays opens up a whole new world in terms of improving compositions! Thanks for showing this.
@@mikemitchell3889 I do the same thing Mike - shoot for the crop! I always like to give myself some extra room on the sides. No - haven't done really anything on polaroid.
I crop pretty much every image. Obviously with a Sony A7R it's easier don't loose much of information in the shot compared to other cameras, but it's the convenience of havin a 42MPX sensor :) As always it's a pleasure to watch your videos. Greetings from Italy Mark!!
When I first started, every video I watched said to fill the frame. So I started doing that. That worked great until....I got ready toy start printing my pictures to hang on the wall. When you shoot in 3:2 and you want to print an 8x10 you are going to have to crop something out and it might ruin your composition. Sup I learned to zoom out and not fill the frame. Now I can crop exactly where I need to go either post on social media or to print.
Light and Composition are the essentials of photography. And you are correct, one should use the Crop tool to refine their compositions. For my part, once I’ve crop my photos I continue on to highlight the elements that coincide with the chosen composition (where the lines meet) and then reduce the intensity (mainly light) of what tries to overcome it (corners and unwanted strong highlights). BTW your original photo of the road taking from above with your drone wasn’t bad - although you chose to crop it to eliminate the bottom part of the road which you thought distracting. Sometimes, a composition goes beyond what a photo shows. A composition can go beyond the initial frame - and this is a good example. We must not forget that it’s not the eye that sees but how our brain perceives vision. In this case, the brain was filling the blank by automatically completing the missing segment (of the road). Here a spiral composition that went beyond the frame would have shown that the focus point would have been the missing segment - which usually you want to avoid. But here, not only do you have an outward point (exit of the road) but your brain creates an entry one to come back within the frame (back to the road). Many painters have use that technique, mainly cutting down mountain roads in such a way for you to progress out of the frame to then return into it. Nice video!
I've found that one of the quickest ways to find a good crop is to download the image to my iphone/ipad and pinch/zoom. Often a crop you wouldn't have thought of will appear instantly
my first lens ever to shooting was a 70-200... my back was against the wall the whole time but after a year shooting with it it really made me learn a lot !
You’ve hit the nail on the head with being out there and taking photos in those situations. When you get back all is calm and so you have more time to analyse the composition. I didn’t realise that the crop tool had those options.
Great to see others using the crop tool as much as I do. My heavy use of it has made me question how good my field eye actually is. But sitting in a quiet room and revisiting a site via the image does give new insight into composition corrections. Thanks so much for reminding us of the crop tools value.
Yeah, that's the issue with photographing Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park as you showed in the early part of the video. When shooting from the shore toward the twin peaks in the distance (they're called The Bubbles for those not familiar with the park) the rocks add a great feeling of depth, but you do have to decide where to crop in that foreground. BTW I appreciate the material you presented--nicely done.
I've known about the rule of thirds forever, but I've been using it wrong. My photography/journalism teacher had just taught us everything should be like even throughout. Really appreciate the new knowledge about putting interest in the intersections!
I think composition, along with light, are the most important factors in photography. And composition is often the most challenging aspect of photography IMO. Great video Mark.
Great vlog Mark! You’re killing it! Keep up the great work! It’s exactly what happens too. You’re so excited what you see on the camera just to open it up on the computer and it’s like the wind stalled in your sail. The crop tool in Lightroom is the best tool in LR in my opinion. Keep on keeping on!
Broke it in and took it to Vancouver Island. It hauled most of what I wanted to take ( which was too much 😂) and it was heavier than what I wanted to hike with. It made a great on location portrait pack that fit a light stand, tripod, small light modifier, flashes, bodies and lenses. However for longer hikes I noticed it would probably be a bit much on the weight side. I love all the room and all the pockets. Sometimes not knowing the unknown we tend to overpack, I feel that's probably what I did. So it's another learning curve. Thanks again!
I've read somewhere that shapes found within nature follow rules similar to the ratios that make up these compositional guidelines. The golden spiral of a snail is an example. So it makes sense then that photographs of things we find visually pleasing follow or compliment these rules found in nature.
@@MarkDenneyPhoto I have a book called 'Nature's Chaos" which is an absolute verification of this - whether in full scale or macro photography examples. Check it out if you get the chance.
Similar to photographing a group of objects whether it be in nature or man made. Usually an odd number of objects just looks right to the eye while an even number doesn't.
In general, I feel shooting to allow for some measure of post-process cropping is fundamental when composing the shot. As you stated frequently, what you visualized during the exposure was not always what felt right when you finalized the image. Plus, the proportion of the sensor is often, not that of the final image. Still, with a cropped-sensor camera like a D500, one sometimes hedges on the crop allowance because we're reluctant to sacrifice pixels in post processing when an image will be enlarged. A mistake because an improved final image is better than simply saving pixels.
Wonderful tutorial. I immediately went and cropped several of my photos (I use GIMP which also offers grid lines). Couldn’t believe the difference. Not bad’ suddenly became ‘wow!’ Thank you so much for sharing this powerful information.
Cudos again on a terrific tutorial video! Something that might also help many users is knowing what your front end process is for scouting, and identifying a landscape photo ‘subject’. Obviously, that’s a somewhat broad characterization, but more specifically what I’m looking for is knowing how do you go about identifying your ‘subject ’ in advance? Do you use a tool like The Photographers Transit, PhotoPills, The Photographer’s Ephemeris, Planit Pro, etc. to identify and layout your shot in advance (location, day/date, time of day, etc.) so that you have an effective idea of how you intend to frame the shot in advance and more importantly, how much time you might have to frame and take the shot? Or do you just wing it when you get there, or better still what you do when you scout the potential locations for the camera placement to get the framing you desire? I’m sorry for the detail requested here but but it could really help some folks who have difficulty with this part of process. Thank you in advance!!!
I’m mostly shooting on film these days. I like to get the right perspective to my eye balls first, before I look thru a viewfinder. I then compose the shot to the best of my ability. If I like it, good if not, the image is scrapped. Pretty straight forward. I don’t have 40+ megapixels to work with, I like the challenge. And I’m not trying to sound pretentious in any way. Nor am I anti digital. I have a Sony A99II. It’s great, I’m just in love with film right now. This is some great advice that I’ll be doing when I get back to the 21st century, haha!
Oh. My. God. I did NOT know about the crop grid overlay tools in Lightroom. How did I not know about this? (it's probably in the instructions somewhere that I didn't read, but that's not important) This is amazing!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I'm going to resist the urge to re-edit a bunch of photos right now. Thanks also for NOT treating the crop tool as a dirty word. I, too, crop the majority of my shots at least a little. ( I think I'm at 99.8% ) ;-) Seriously, though, THANKS!
Awesome video! Finally somebody who talks about photography and not about pen pressure tablet and gear! Thanks a lot for the video and keep coming up with similar content!
I come from a time when being a good full frame photographer was important and desired. For all you newbees out there, full frame is not that silly camera format ( that I know as 35mm). What it means is try to compose your shots so that you don't have to crop later. But I guess if you are using a medium format camera, you can get away with it. My advice is: try to think better before you press the shutter.
Hey Mark! You're doing a terrific job at this and one reason why I follow your channel is your clean, straight to the point concepts and succinct. Thank you! To answer your question: I probably crop every 90% of my photos and only with a handful ones, I make multiple copies with a few different compositions to see which photo looks better.
As soon as I saw the old school Gameboy on your desk I totally zoned out and started looking on eBay for Gameboy games. Now I have to re-watch the video.
Another well delivered video Mark and I totally appreciate your honesty regarding the crop tool. Yes I use it and I am pretty sure all those "pros" out there that say they get it right in the camera use it too. A couple years ago I bought one of those negative scanners and started scanning/copying my images from negatives to my hard-drive. Then I would take those scans and post-process them in Lightroom and yeah... I would crop them too. Now many of these negatives are from my military days from the 80s and they are a bit scratched up, so not only did I crop them, I would also clean up the scratches and then I converted most into B&W images. ~Ron
PS is so complex that is easy to forget some of its features and I had completely forgotten about the crop toll overlays, thanks for the reminder, I shall try to make more use of them.
I'm happy to know I'm not alone in doing my best composition in post. I've found the best I can do in the field is changing perspective, so I like to shoot from other-than eyeball height -- in particular, low. It's amazing how much different a shot looks taken from the ground, and how much more foreground interest this perspective avails us. I too get the most from my 42MP. As much as you crop, you might consider upgrading to the 61MP mark iv. Thanks for another great video. I feel a lot better now about my needing to drop so much in post.
You don't need 61 Mpixels. 42 Mpixels is fine for cropping. Got to be something more to layout $3500 for a camera when the last camera was 2 years ago. I still have my 4 x 5 camera made in 1960s. I crop that scan a lot.
Great demo of how to play around with the different grid overlays. Even if I don't ultimately crop, I always play around with images to make sure the original composition still works for me, like looking at the image with fresh eyes.
Excellent video and some great information. I hate it when I hear people say "you have to get it right in camera" and "you waste pixels when you crop". Yes, getting it right when you shoot is fantastic but it's not a hard and fast LAW. And yes, you do waste some pixels but with the resolution of cameras today, you aren't losing that much (and we're not talking about only using 10% of the frame). I sometimes also shoot a scene with a different ratio (than the native 3:2) and since my camera doesn't allow me to change it, crop is the only method. Again, great information as I didn't know about some of those crop overlays. Take care.
Thus far two tuts under my belt with you Mark, and both enjoyable, educational and delivered at a even pace.. I would like to add one more element in the mix to the crop, and that's flopping it, as an old timer friend calls it, or as we call it today, flipping your image either horizontal or vertical depending on the image. Keeping in mind we read from left to right horizontally or from top down vertically..and then the next step, shaping your light to draw the viewer to the high light of the image ..
Great tutorial! I always have shot with a the rule of thirds for my landscapes, but using this crop tool, I've gone back and looked at a lot of my work and found ways to refine some of them. I will be using this feature a little more than before.
Awesome content Mark! This video was highly informative. Actually would love to see more of your thoughts on composition. Thanks for your great content!
I use the crop tool in about 90% of my images and almost constantly. It is a great tool and as you mentioned, you can go back to an image at a later date and re-style your work so that it becomes more pleasing to the eye
Wow! I am a very fierce cropper.. sometimes I crop to just one fourth of the image but never considered using these overlays! Fantastic video Mark 😍 Thank u for giving such awesome content ❤️
Recently I have been more conscious of the rule of thirds when composing pictures in the field. Not always so easy when there are multiple points of interest in a landscape. So I still end up cropping almost all of my pictures to some extent. I've only used the rule of thirds overlay. Will need to try out these others. Thanks
I appreciate this video a lot. I probably under use the crop tool, but there is a reason for that. I am using older cameras with a lower megapixel count. I can crop any way I need to for images posted online, but I have to be very careful if I think I will ever want to print an image of a larger size. I tend to crop for ratio more vs composition, which I need to re-evaluate. I crop 16:9 because I do put stills in videos and I like the perfect fit so to speak.
Congratulations on the channel, your videos are precious lessons. I have been fortunate enough to find photographers of his quality and didactics that are contributing a lot to my growth in photography. You can be sure that people like you do a great job of good photography ... congratulations
5 лет назад
Very good and super interesting. There are thousands of videos from Photoshop and Lightroom; but this is one of those "weird" videos that really contribute a lot and in a very special and simple way, about a little treated tool and that we can use it in something as fundamental as the composition of our photographs. Thank you very much, a hug and blessings. Muy bueno y súper interesante. Existen miles de videos de Photoshop y Lightroom; pero este es uno de esos videos "raros" que realmente aportan muchísimo y de una forma muy especial y simple, sobre una herramienta poco tratada y que podemos utilizarla en algo tan fundamental como lo es la composición de nuestras fotografías. Muchas gracias, un abrazo y bendiciones.
Until now I used the rule of thirds only. With your illustration I learned something... I will check the other rules systematically in the future! So far I used the crop tool as you did before... very helpful video!
What a useful tip; cycling through the overlays to find the best "formal" composition that works with the image, then cropping to fine-tune and make best use of that compositional tool! Thanks very much.
I think what you are also stating is get a good basic composition but leave lots of room for cropping later because then while working on the image you have lots of potential
Thanks for suggestions Mark,often we're always "fixed" on rule of thirds , your interesting video reminded me that composition may be different.Thumbs up
Excellent explanation of the various crop tools available in Lightroom but I hope that this video doesn't lead to folks having an over dependence upon post processing cropping. When all is said and done every inch trimmed from your original image is data thrown away with a resultant drop in image quality, especially when making large prints. While it's true that composing perfectly in the field is more difficult than in post processing it's not impossible and almost invariably the effort to do so will both improve your ability to "see" as well as yield a higher quality image
Thank you very much Mark... i've been making a serious mistake on all my photos. I've very rarely cropped my photos, simply because I didn't have the knowledge and never looked closely enough at my composition... You have woken this old Bloke up today and I will begin my new editing style with some crop ideas.. Thanks Mate.. Be safe.. Neville J.... I seem to be similar to a comment from below my own,, I'm afraid of the crop tool because I've never paid attention to using it or learning more about it...
I'd like to thank you for creating this video. I was looking for something else when your title drew me to you instead. Since buying my first digital camera about 10 years ago I have found that I need to use the crop tool on most of my photos and have always felt that I must be getting worse at composing with a digital camera than during all the years when I only had film cameras. I do tend to leave more around the edges of the frame today to allow for cropping because I now have to use my left eye to frame the scene in the viewfinder (I still prefer the viewfinder to the screen for stability) as my right eye is less accurate in focusing (I do miss the parallel lines or the diamond screens of the film cameras though). Your talk has given me more confidence that it is not a matter of getting worse more a matter that I'm able to make adjustments that with film, being processed by someone else, I had no additional control over. I only use Photoshop Elements 5 for my processing, which is very basic I'm afraid to say. I haven't progressed to things like layers and masks yet, that is to come, but now I've seen this video and your style of teaching that makes it easy for me to understand I will be checking out your other work. Thank you so much.
Been using Lightroom for about 2 years and always used the crop tool for my images. I did not know about the overlays, thanks Mark. I've used the rule of thirds for in camera composition for the last 40 years, but there's always room for improvement.
This was a perfectly timed topic for me since I just started working more with crops after learning about the crop short cut from your video a few weeks ago. I’m going to play with it more today. May I also make a suggestion for a future topic? Matching the color on your screen to the color of a printer be it your home printer or a commercial printer. I’ve printed a few images that just didn’t have the same color on paper that I did on the screen. Thanks.
Started using the various crop grids and they have made a difference. I trust my compositional eye in the field but I can already see that in processing my images I can get my final image to be much stronger. Nice one Mark
Thanks Mark! I recently flew to Bend Oregon from Seattle and captured some really cool highway shots (like yours). Your composition tips really helped me explore different techniques to give the images even more pzazz!
Once again you taught me something I didnt know and that was about the different overlays in Lightroom 👍 Yet ANOTHER informative video Mark that is greatly appreciated by me. G'day from downunder mate! 🇦🇺
I appreciate the way you have selected a topic, taken examples and explained it differently to others on RU-vid. Absolutely brilliant. This video was convincing enough for me to hit the subscribe button. All the best for your channel
Great advice Mark, many people do not know about the different crop overlays. You're images look good, but looking at your histograms I think you would benefit from a technique called ETTR (Expose to the right) .
Great video. I do crop often but forget about the overlays. I will be trying this in the future. I have a suggestion. It was hard to visualize the changes you made, so maybe in the future you could show them side by side? This is not meant to be critical, just hoping it could help your viewers see the changes. Keep up the good work!
Thanks again for a well produced and informative video. I've used LR for years and was not aware of the overlays other than the rule of thirds. I especially appreciate that you showed us your uncropped images and how you got to your final version. I have felt the disappointment that you described when I get home and look at my frames on a larger screen. Even through I've been cropping for years, I can see the benefits of the diagonal and triangle overlays to fine tune my pictures. Thank you!
