I often crop my photos in an effort to make them more abstract/composed/whatever but that means I sometimes can't even remember what it was a photo of to begin with.
I started looking through uncropped versions of photos and thought it was interesting to see how they started and how they ended up, so I figured I'd share some examples.
These are all color to black and white because they show the biggest difference from start to finish.
@Alice Sounds like a good life lesson.
Great photos! And nice editing work! You could sell those, maybe get your own side business going, McFlurry Art.
@Gustodon π Thanks, Gus!
I have a lot of imposter syndrome because I never took a photography class or learned to use a real camera and just quickly snap with my phone as I go, but that means a lot!
Recommended. Slice's photos are often little, well, *slices* of beauty extracted from the otherwise mundane.
I like them, anyway. Garn. Have a look. You might like them too. π
@AndreaKusel For real! I have always loved squares and 1:1 ratios are just more comforting to me.
I had a photographer friend kind of criticize me for cropping everything into a square, implying I only do it because Instagram does it that way and I was just like bruh I have been cropping photos into squares since I first learned how to crop a photo back in the 1990s.
To me, squares just look and feel better than random rectangles.
I think it's also more challenging to consistently crop and compose into a square because I can't just drag the ends/sides to wherever I want. Like, sure I could just crop my sides to anywhere and end up with rectangles with whatever resulting ratios, but ending up with a nicely composed square is part of the artistic process to me.
@Alice
Yeah, I've had that instagram thought before. Like, has instagram shaped my aesthetic perception (even as a non-instagram user) or are square photos just beautiful? But like you, I'd say the latter. (And maybe that's a big part of what has made instagram so popular?)
I remember, when I learned about the golden ratio and how it pleases the eye, I thought "I don't know, I like square format at least as much as A4."
Anyways, I love your photos. Not only because they're square.
@Alice a master at work
thank you
Alice, the art is in the cropping / editing and itβs brilliant.
@serpicojam @ewen @Alice +1! The choices of crop are π¨βπ³ π
Turns out there's quite a bit to this photography thing π
This is fantastic. I need to try this.
@FormerlyStC Thank you, Chris!
I still donβt know how to use a real camera, but I at least know how to use my basic AF native photos app on my phone to straighten them out a bit.
What camera did you use to take these photos?
Do you use any special camera apps or just the normal one? What postprocessing do you use? Do you find that you get the right amount of detail when you crop the photos?
@Madagascar_Sky @BewilderedBeast I just use the native iOS app for editing photos. Just cropping/rotating/straightening and general enhancing with colors/shadows/etc.
I can't always get close enough to the subject or sometimes I need to stand far enough away to get everything I want within the frame, so I definitely donβt get the right amount of detail and often my crops/zooms end up fuzzy/grainy, but that's okay since I'm not printing or selling anything and, to me, it's more about capturing the little square, however it may turn out.
Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this. It gives us insight into your creative process. I live in the mountains, surrounded by a national forest, with a dark sky. My subject matter is quite different from yours, and my process of composing and visualizing appears to be different than yours. It's not worse, or better... just different.
Again, thank you!
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