A case for megapixels (Patreon)

My first digital camera was a Canon D30. I think it was 3.3 MP back in the day. It was great, but at the limited number of pixels, I learned how to fill a frame because of one thing - you could not afford to crop and loose any info in a file. 

Fast forward to the Canon 5D - Full Frame. I finally felt like I could shoot like I had with film. Still though, could not crop much.

The past almost 4 years I have been shooting with a Fuji X100, which has been it's own joy and revelation to me, and my mentality was still, avoid cropping ( not just rotational adjustments, etc ). 

Enter the D800. It's file size is 3x that of the Fuji. Significant in how fast hard drives fill up and my decision to rotate shooting formats, raw vs. jpg and that reasoning. Ideally I would shoot RAW all the time, but with the D800 file size, and my workflow and disc space, I now treat each shoot differently. I won't go into detail on the Raw Vs. JPG internal debate is, everyone has to choose their own and their own reasoning. 

I'm here to talk about Cropping. I remember looking thru photo books and interviews with great photographers I looked up to, and I always remember their contact sheets, and hand marked lines of crop. The lesson being, cropping made a good image better, by bringing focus to something/someone or a particular detail the photographer liked. Improved composition, etc. 

So I have been re learning this art - The art of the Crop. 

The image I posted is an example of what I am talking about. The crop is much stronger image than the full shot. It tells a different story to me. 

There is a certain amount of Ego that goes in this too. I think when shooting the natural thing is to believe, how I framed this shot is how it is supposed to be, and for me, I have been pretty rigid towards not cropping other than for the typical reasons. With the Nikon, I have been more free in framing to account for things - because I know I can crop a great deal if needed. I have been reminding myself to backup some, I don't need to be so tight. 

And, even with that, I still have plenty of clipped feet and things that happen during shoots. It's very fluid and that will never change. 

How I look at a shoot during it's creation and after is changing, and I wanted to share this with you. 

The model is Anna

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