I did not notice the little fly when I pressed the button (see inset, SOOC, posted here for comparison) so when I saw it later on the laptop screen I tried a very hard crop to enlarge it. The quality is not great, quite grainy taken in poor light at 400 iso, but I thought it was worth a try.
This is a quite extreme example but I think it serves to show that even the poorest picture can often be rescued, or at least slightly improved, by careful cropping and a bit of digital massage. The original was taken at 5x optical zoom + 4x digital, on a simple point and shoot camera (Lumix DSC-XS1 costing less than £100) but survived its journey well.
I quite agree Arthur. I sometimes find more than one picture within a picture when I crop bits and pieces and I have fairly basic processing skills. You never know what you may find by zooming into different areas.
@wordpixman The art of being an artist I believe ;) You need the eye to spot and then alter images to improve them. Anyone can point and shoot but making a great job of a mediocre shot is where art is created :)
@psychographer ... My thoughts entirely, Lisa. The eye behind the finger on the button, the mind to admit that it was not quite right, and the will to improve.
@wordpixman Agreed, and beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder. Each to their own and art is such a subjective thing. I like to think I have a broad interest and I like to try lots of different styles and genres but we're never going to please all the people all the time so it's better just to do what pleases us isn't it.
oh Arthur the one thing I love about digital photography is the fact that you can so often find something wonderful in an image you didn't realise was there - I have learned all about composition - and now I can and do compose a photo in camera but sometimes I just wander around clicking away and look forward to what I might find inside the image when I get home - does that make me less a photographer - I don't think so - I think it makes me creative and artistic and looking with a different eye
I find sometimes that cropping helps me with another issue -- all the stuff I didn't really quite notice in my focus on the main target ... or stuff that is just too far away from where I am (and I DO see the extraneous material, but can't get it out of the frame)
I too did exactly the same the other day - a nice garden picture, but when I cropped I had a little bug on a flower tip which could be composed to its best and made a better photo.
@chippy1402 ... Thank you for that, Peter. I know my views are not universally shared, especially among the dedicated camera club purists who believe that anything done to improve a photograph after carefully posing and lighting it and pressing the button is tantamount to sacrilege, but I have always cropped my images and post-processed them to show what my brain saw, instead of blindly accepting a mindless "mechanncal" image .
Congratulations on returning to the fold after so much personal tragedy. Photography and writing are so cathartic! My health has been deteriorating over the last couple of years (I am now84!) but I still get out for a short while occasionally although holding a walking stick in one hand and nursing a fracture on the other somewhat limits the ability to use a camera!.
I have looked at and enjoyed your blog, and would invite you also to have a look at my personal website, http://www.wordpixman.co.uk/ - a mixture of photography, writing and paintings - and blog, https://anglianwriter.com/ if you have the time or interest.
@wordpixman I've just had a look at your blog and see you are from Suffolk more in common than meets the eye as I'm living across the border in Norfolk :-)
Cropping is a great tool and, being a luddite, it isn't much different from what was done, or could be done, in the old film days. It's a classic photographic technique.
@granagringa ... exactly so. Even in film and plate days I never failed to crop every picture for optimum effect, and with such a massive armoury of free digital assistance available now there is no excuse for releasing uncropped work into the public domain.
Couldn't agree more. Make the best of what you capture using whatever tools you are lucky enough to have available. Cropping is, and nearly always has been, one of the most effective tools.
Understanding the stereotypical 'camera club' purist mentality of it has to be right in camera seems beyond me, but each to their own creative vision.
I have to confess though it rankles with me when SOOC is presented as 'better'.
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Congratulations on returning to the fold after so much personal tragedy. Photography and writing are so cathartic! My health has been deteriorating over the last couple of years (I am now84!) but I still get out for a short while occasionally although holding a walking stick in one hand and nursing a fracture on the other somewhat limits the ability to use a camera!.
I have looked at and enjoyed your blog, and would invite you also to have a look at my personal website, http://www.wordpixman.co.uk/ - a mixture of photography, writing and paintings - and blog, https://anglianwriter.com/ if you have the time or interest.
Best wishes to you from a like mind.
Understanding the stereotypical 'camera club' purist mentality of it has to be right in camera seems beyond me, but each to their own creative vision.
I have to confess though it rankles with me when SOOC is presented as 'better'.