Cropping in the Camera

I've become more disciplined or at least more aware of my framing when shooting. After my first critique with Paul, I realized that he was looking at all of the frames, the whole raw frame without any mention of cropping, but with just an direct critque on what I shot in each entire frame. Over my career, I've tried to do that with two factors that influenced it: 1.) Paul Morse and 2.) Annie Leibovitz.

I don't know what people think of Annie Liebovitz. I've developed mixed feelings but still she was a big influence because I was a teenage wannabe rock star and my first influences in photography were people like Jim Marshall, Dezo Hoffman and Annie Leibovitz. When I was a kid, somebody bought me a Dezo Hoffman photography book of his work with The Beatles (who I was an absolute fanatic over for years). I bought aquired some old Annie Leibovitz photo books (Shooting Stars, Rolling Stone Book of Portraits, which is an all B&W compiliation book which she edited that is documentary-much more than Rolling Stone's later photographs of extravagant lighting and sets. The other is Mark & Leibovitz, The Photojournalist.) In the second book, there is a portion of a contact sheet on one page of one of Leibovitz's shoots at a prison that was made a big impact on me-even now.

Each of the frames of Leibovitz's prison shoot was different and good. I guess because it was before I became a photographer and it just stuck. Much later when I actually became a photographer, I thought it was great and even referenced this in debates about Annie Leibovitz with Leibovitz-haters.

Paul Morse was a staff photographer at the Pasadena Star-News when I was doing an internship there in college. Paul was sort of the star, young hot shot who was always winning awards. I was just learning photography and really a bit uncomfortable because my experience was more in writing than photography. Paul was super cool and would always give advice and encouragement. One thing that stuck was when he emphasized that he "cropped in the camera," he considered the whole frame in shooting. Although it might seem silly now, it made a strong impact on a green intern who was stumbling along.

Over my years in newspapers, cropping is something that I did regularly and learned how to do it to strengthen photos-mostly hard news and sports. As an editor, I had to do my share of it for all kinds of reasons, but would try to respect or at least find out the intention of the photographer. So in a sense, the course has really helped me take a step back. Also, focusing so much on Cartier-Bresson these days, I'm more aware than ever of the full frame.