Where to Cut Off Limbs? How crop photos? Etc are some of the common questions asked by many beginners. The simple illustration given below, which essentially follows the rule "don't crop off at the joints” will help you better compose your portraits and avoid the biggest mistake in portraiture, of making people look amputated in your shots.
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| Portrait Photography Cropping Cheat Sheet |
The principle will come in handy when shooting and also when cropping your photos in post production. Cropping your subject at an awkward place can easily ruin an otherwise perfect shot. And it not only applies to humans but also to any living thing. So you can effectively apply it while photographing wildlife and pets.
Cropping photos of people can be done in so many different ways pay attention to the colored lines they show the best and worst areas to crop a subject. Those green lines indicate good places to crop and those red lines indicate places to avoid. No more awkward people photos download the diagram on to your desktop, ipad or smart phone so as to keep it handy for your next shooting / editing session.
Here are a couple of examples of wrong cropping.
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| Crop Guidelines for Portrait Photography |
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| Free portrait photography cropping guide |
Keep a watch on the edges of your frame to make sure the person/animal you're photographing hasn't had any of their body parts chopped off by it. Make sure you are completing all your limbs, or at least cropping at the appropriate places. The unintentional limb chopping can pull attention away from what the viewer should really be looking at.
Happy Clicking.
Related Reading
- Using the Foreground to Improve Your Photography Composition
- Using Patterns in Photography Composition
- Using Symmetry to Improve Your Photography Composition
- The Classic Landscape Photography Composition Technique
- Negative Space in Photography? What is it? Why is it Important? How to Make the Most of It?