Cropping?

To crop or not to crop? Recently, over on nauturephotographers.net, there has been some discussion about cropping. When one looks at a photo one wants to believe that one is seeing exactly what the photographer saw when he looked through the viewfinder. To discover that this was only 50 or 25% true sends some toggers into a spin. Many purists would have it that this is a cheat of the digital age, and that such practices should be banned along with cloning in or out large amounts of content. But this practice of cropping dates waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to the days of film (centuries or so ago ;) ), so why does digital get the rap again? Because it takes seconds, not hours to setup and get right.

Of course if we want the maximum amount of detail and lower noise we must fill the frame, but that is not always possible as we either have a prime lens on or our zoom is not long enough, so we crop. Modern sensors, such as my 7D's 18MP, can handle a lot of cropping (at lower ISOs), so why whould I not?

On the otherhand cropping is commonplace for film and video, especially as there are differing aspect ratios, a wide 19:6 capture must be cropped down for a 4:3 display.

Eventually it comes down to the photographer to decide on what he wants to show. Like here, I could have cropped down to the bunny and still had enough resolution for an A4 print, but I wanted to show some of his environment, set the scene, leave space for a message incase someone decided to buy it as an easter card ;)

50D, 100-400, ISO200

It is all down to the artists vision, let them decide what should be seen.