Street Photography: Are set-ups and poses ever permissable?

[Bertram2]

To whatever degree we succeed at it, I think it's good to TRY to fill the frame as best we can to minimize later cropping, for reasons of technical quality.

Exactly ! That's the only reason not to crop a 35mm neg if possible, the loss of quality., especially at the higher ISOs. Rules ? No. Each photo IS a crop already, it is YOUR crop , done with a lens and at a distance you have chosen for it.
Photograpy is cropping, cropping is THE essential part of it's nature, you always point on a certain part of reality. If you do it with the camera or with the enlarger des not play a role.

Some get crazy about it and buy 360° pano cameras to catch the whole reality. 😀

All in good humor, no offense meant , I love panos too ! 🙂

Best,
bertram

 

[Doug]

I'm not against cropping but I believe that, ideally, you should be able to fill the frame of whatever format you're using so that cropping isn't necessary. That's the goal-I don't think too many of us do that good a job of it. If you look at some of the uncropped shots of a few of the so-called experts, you can see lots of ways in which to improve the composition by cropping. However, there will always be a bunch of arty-farty types to explain why all the empty space is vital to picture...

Bruce, are you telling us that negative space is a negative on the negative? 😀

 

[Pherdinand]

artsy-fartsy or not, big black regions do help emphasize the subjkect in many cases.