HCB and Cropping

andydrew said:
It strikes me that cropping is a bit like masturbation. We all do it, but don't like to admit it ;-)
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Ok, I'll come out of the closet and admit I like both. That's about as serious as I can get about cropping a photo.

Bob
 
Bresson didnt crop because he didnt print.If he"d printed Im sure he"d have been playing with himself all day long.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear Steve,

EVERYONE shoots what they see in their mind's eye, ignoring what is outside the composition which interests them. To do otherwise would be shooting at random and trying to find a picture in the negative afterwards.

To attribute unusual intent to HCB in this respect is therefore meaningless. Unusual talent, even genius, yes. Unusual intent, no.

Cheers,

R.
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Roger, maybe I didn't put it simply enough. But I think if you read what I said you'd see I was not crowning HCB with 'unusual intent' (whatever that is), but with a very normal intent of saying that if the image in his head didn't match the negative perfectly, then it wasn't 'cropping' to omit the extraneous details.

Hands up anybody who can precisely say what is going to be in, or out, of a rangefinder composed negative? HCB composed in the Leica viewfinder, with the normal element of doubt about the films true edges. So whatever happens in the darkroom is to make the seen image, not the one that abitrarily has an extra arm or leg coming into the frame even if that is whats on the negative.

Steve
 
At the end of the day whenever HCB arises on the internet or anywhere for that matter there usually follows heated discussion for and against maintaing and deconstructing the myths that surround his name.

Perhaps it could be said that a number of the myths could be attributed to not only his intellectual answeres but also to over-zealous writers who exaggerated his statements.

Anyway, after reading all of the above commentators it has to be said that I have learnt a lot more on the subject. It has been an enlightening thread.
 
A lot of his photographs that we see very much seem to catch the moment, and he had a knack for seeing juxtapositions of people and things in compositions that very few would have noticed to begin with. He also came from wealth and it didn't much matter if he dabbled in art or played with his Leica, he was going to eat anyway.

People like that know other people in the same finacial situation. Maybe your dad went to prep school with the editor of some magazine, that sort of thing. With all the taent in the world it still helps to have doors opened for you. He was the right guy in the right place at the right time. He may or may not have been one of the greatest photographers on the planet but he had influential people telling the world that he was. A legend was born.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
Okay, there we have it.
Not only is Mr Cartier Bresson (The photographer, not the Catskill stand up comic) a liar, and a devious over exagerator of his own abilities, now it has been revealed by the Rangefinder forum that he is only famous because his family status opened doors and his rich influencial friends made sure it happened. Thats excellent. One less genius to be in awe of I suppose. Leaves more room at the top for all us doesn't it...:D

You know Charles Darwin wasn't short of a dollar, and yet no one so far has decided to sideline evolution on the basis that it was thought up by a guy who didn't need to work for a living like the rest of us.....:bang:

Perhaps this can be explained for me; in what fashion is Van Gogh's paintings diminshed by the fact that he owned his own house and didn't have to work for a living?
 
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Creationists have rather a lot to say about Charles Darwin, but it has nothing to with money of course.

Maybe HCB will be 'outed' next? :D

Seriously, I dont think anyone is saying HCB was all those things, only that what he said in various snippets over the years should not be taken as law. People change perspectives and do not need, in the art community at least, to present as fact everything they do behind the scenes. Perhaps all we should care about it the prints. Whether they were cropped or not does not change what is presented to us and it upon that he has always been judged, rather than what he may or may not have cropped out in the darkroom.

I personally am very happy for people to obsess over not cropping. If there are lots of potentially magnificent photographers out there throwing out negs and only using 50mm lenses because they are creating market space for those with a somewhat more flexible approach :D. I suspect that the people who buy images and create the market for such images do not care. I suspect all they do care about is that no PS was used to add/remove elements and that what is presented is a moderately faithful depiction of real events. I also suspect they prefer their images without intruding drainpipes/fence pickets/hands or damaged parts of the neg being printed.
 
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Al Kaplan said:
He was the right guy in the right place at the right time.
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Yes he was, and he did have doors opened for him. But he also worked extremely hard. That combo was the killer.
Carlsen Highway said:
Perhaps this can be explained for me; in what fashion is Van Gogh's paintings diminshed by the fact that he owned his own house and didn't have to work for a living?
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Van Gogh lived in penury most of his short life. He often lived on bread and water to pay for painting materials and models. He did work for a living in his earlier years but was driven to paint. Supported entirely by his younger brother Theo he only managed to sell one painting during his lifetime.
 
peter_n said:
Yes he was, and he did have doors opened for him. But he also worked extremely hard. That combo was the killer.....
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but as is often the case, the lack of financial concerns allowed/helped that talent to flourish. One has no idea whether that ability would have seen the light of day had he needed to earn money to feed/house himself. I agree that it does not matter because the talent is there, but it is worth acknowledging the many potential artists who do not have the money and will not sacrifice their families in order to pursue artistic success. we will never know about them, but we can be sure they are out there. That HCB was born into a wealthy family takes nothing away from what he did. At least he did it. Many would have lived off the allowance/inheritance or gambled it away!
 
I am thinking that this is more of an issue with film. The edge of a negative is never a completely straight and clean line...The transition is always interesting and has its own physical qualities.
In digital the last pixel at the edge is, well, still a pixel. I wonder if someone already came up with a "film edge effect" plugin! No limits in tackiness. So I'm sure it's already there.
In my opinion anti-crop puritanism (when digital is concerned) doesn't have much of a conceptual basis.
 
Go to a wedding photograpy forum or website or local wedding photographers studio and yes, there are plenty of "edge effect" plug-ins, ranging from a black line to what they call "sloppy borders", what you get from printing full negative with a crudely filed out negative carrier without using a four blade easel. All glitz and no substance, but the masses eat it up.

http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
 
rondo said:
I am thinking that this is more of an issue with film. The edge of a negative is never a completely straight and clean line...The transition is always interesting and has its own physical qualities.
In digital the last pixel at the edge is, well, still a pixel. I wonder if someone already came up with a "film edge effect" plugin! No limits in tackiness. So I'm sure it's already there.
In my opinion anti-crop puritanism (when digital is concerned) doesn't have much of a conceptual basis.
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http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/photoframe.php
 
I see a $$$$ making opportunity here. A program that would not only put a black line around your photos (and please forget about the fact that these photographers probably never printed that way) but the black line would be an exact match of Gene Smith's favorite Leica or HCB's or...etc.

Or get REALLY sloppy like I do on my blog http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com sometimes, scanning directly off a contact sheet including all or part of the perforations, and leaving all of the dust spots. I'm not sure that effect would appeal to very many brides though.
 
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Al Kaplan said:
All glitz and no substance, but the masses eat it up.
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tom.w.bn said:
http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/photoframe.php
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Just as I thought. For me this is equal to "crime against photography"...But more of an issue with commercial garbage, and easier to vilify....
But then again I find myself experimenting with fake grain and other film effects and I think the line between gimmick and good taste is very thin and open to debate. Ideally every medium should develop its own unique aesthetic language. So without opening the horrible digital vs film debate-one needs to think more on where to stop at PP, what to borrow from film etc. But don't want to hijack the thread really....I think cropping is OK. But there is an added value to a print that shows the edge as the initial intent of the photographer. Obviously same could be said for digital too: but a RAW file does not have the physical qualities that signify the "edge"....So crop all you want and keep the EXIF to yourself and have them wonder!
 
Al Kaplan said:
I see a $$$$ making opportunity here. A program that would not only put a black line around your photos (and please forget about the fact that these photographers probably never printed that way) but the black line would be an exact match of Gene Smith's favorite Leica or HCB's or...etc.
Or get REALLY sloppy like I do on my blog http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com sometimes, scanning directly off a contact sheet including all or part of the perforations, and leaving all of the dust spots. I'm not sure that effect would appeal to very many brides though.
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Like typewriter fonts for your word processor...same idea. But I truly like the sloppy technique. Who cares about the brides? And probably the grooms would hate is as much. Sloppy scans are liberating. The problem is the scanning has gone out of control as well: the trend is to get the plastic digital feeling out of old negatives-with dust removal software etc. Similar to audio: old analog recordings transfered to CD with artificial enhancements. or just the other way around: you can add fake LP scratch sound to digital recordings! Would that be equivalent to digital grain at Silver Efex?
Very funny...Always trying to conceal the true nature! Film scans that look like digital, digital that looks like film...etc etc...
 
I have the contact sheets, the scans look good enough (by my standards) for the blog, and I don't have to go digging out the negatives. So far I haven't seen any wedding albums showing frame numbers and perforations, and of course you wouldn't want the same frame number on fifty different photos!
 
yanidel said:
given the lack of accuracy of the M8 framelines, I have no problem with a little cropping. If you end up cropping all the time (which obviously HCB did not do), the problem is probably more with your shooting technique and composition skills.
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HCB had no problem with M8 framelines and neither should you

:)
 
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