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Every Tuesday I bring you a tidbit of information meant to develop your photography skills or simply your appreciation of photography. This week’s tidbit: If you have to amputate…
Amputation: the removal of a body extremity by trauma or surgery….or cropping
Whether cropping in-frame (as you compose the image in your camera frame) or you do some post-cropping (which I know you all do on a regular basis, being the avid and genius Tuesday Tidbit followers that you are), there comes a time when you’re going to have to amputate a limb or two. In other words, you’re going to have to crop an image so that the edge of the frame cuts off part of a person’s arm or a leg. Amputating isn’t bad, and isn’t something to necessarily be avoided; in fact, many of the classic poses in portraiture call for some form of amputation or another. But if you have to amputate, there are rules to follow.
Well, there’s really just one rule…
And that rule is, don’t cut off the limb at a joint (an elbow, a knee, a wrist, an ankle, even the waist) but rather in the middle of the limb (at the thigh, the bicep). If you cut off a limb at a joint, your viewer will psychologically be uncomfortable because, for whatever reason, we can imagine the rest of a limb when it’s cut off in the middle but our minds freak out (omg!) if we see a limb cut off at the joint. Evolutionary? Prolly. ANYway, here are two examples of proper amputation:
Happy amputating…er…shooting from Vantage Photography!
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