It’s the age-old question. where and when to crop? In this instance I’m not talking about cropping the photo to make your subject larger in the frame or to omit details that got in to your shot. Personally, I crop as little as possible in post. I prefer to get it right in the camera. And that doesn’t include Nikon’s high-speed crop. That’s for a later post.
Here, I’m talking about when your subject is too large for the frame and you can’t zoom or move back to capture your subject. Sometimes, you just want to capture a particular feature of your subject. Maybe you want that head shot. While this is open to artistic decisions, sometimes cropping the subject can be awkward.
I was again at one of my favorite Florida wildlife spots, the Wakodahatchee Wetlands. In the instance of the iguana above, taken with my Nikon D5 with Nikkor 800mm, where is the appropriate place to crop the subject? Crop too far back and it looks like the iguana isn’t balanced in the frame. Generally for 4 legged animals like moose and elk, you want to crop right behind the head or right behind the front legs. Of course, this depends on the pose, the critter, and what you are aiming to tell in your story. I’m interested to hear your comments on the subject.
