Everyone would like to take photographs that make the viewers go, “Wow! Wish I’d
taken that.” Well it is not so hard, once you understand that all photographic
images are not really 5x4, 5x7 or even 10x8.
The
size you get back from your friendly photo shop is related in most instances, to
the size of what a 35 mm negative used to be. The photographic printers are
preset towards those sizes, and those sizes will suit the average weekend
photographer. However, you are not the average weekend photographer, or you
wouldn’t be reading this article.
The 5x4 print is very roughly of the same proportions as the
35 mm negative, so what you could see on the negative could be reproduced on the
photographic paper. This is great in theory, but does not necessarily correspond
to the subject you want to photograph. Not everything or everyone fits neatly
into a 5x4 format.
Take a look at the photograph this week. This is a long
tailed lizard, taken by my keen amateur photographic friend the late Ernie
Kuehnelt. This is a great shot and was one that Ernie had to use all his stealth
to record. Lizards are not renowned for responding to exhortations to “keep
still,” but he kept going until he got the shot, with the head framed nicely
contrasted against the light background.
Now look again at the photograph. Long tailed lizards are not
5x4 or even 10x8 (same proportions obviously) or 6x6 or 6x7. When Ernie first
brought the lizard pic into my office, he had cropped a little off both the
sides to produce an elongated print. We sat and looked at it, but in the end we
both decided it needed even more cropping to both sides to get the best from the
photograph. We laid sheets of white paper down both sides, and suddenly the
lizard became more and more powerful as the subject. The blank spaces either
side had been taking the impact away from the subject. Cropping severely brought
it out. So now Ernie was left with a long skinny print. Instead of 10x8 it was
now more like a 10x4! But that did not matter, when you see the impact in the
final print.
The moral to the tale (or the lizard’s tail) is that you
should look very critically at some of your better shots, and then sit down with
four sheets of paper and begin to look at how you could crop the shot, to give
the subject more “oomph”. Pro shooters use two “L” shaped pieces of card, moving
them around to find the best cropping situation, but four pieces of A4 printer
paper are just as good.
To bring your prints into such that they will look good
hanging on your wall, my suggestion is to get an 8R enlargement done (generally
less than 100 baht in most photo processors) and then begin the visual cropping
exercise as detailed above. Be bold, even cropping right close to hair lines, or
even into the hair sometimes looks better. Don’t be afraid to crop into elbows
when framing up portraits, for example. The idea is just to make the subject
stand out.
When you have the best crop lines, then using a guillotine
(most photo shops have these too), carefully finish the cropping exercise. It is
this final print, no matter what proportions it ends up, that you should have
framed and hung as wall art for your home or office. It should also be
remembered that the frame requires careful consideration. It is no good to spend
all this time on making the subject stand out, and then dwarfing it with a huge
ornate gold frame! Don’t let the frame dominate the subject!
Since you are probably storing the images in your computer,
crop these images before saving as well.
Do all this and then people will walk in and say, “Wow! I wish I’d taken
that!” They will, believe me. The different shape is an immediate eye catcher,
and with the subject matter now being the definite “hero”, you have that
powerful head-turning shot you have always wanted.
