As I reflect on everything I have learned about photography from 1999 until now, I am amazed that I have never had a complete course on composition, and more importantly cropping. I guess it is a topic that seems so simple, yet is commonly overlooked as an integral part of our workflow. That is astonishing because our viewer’s response to our work is in direct correlation to the composition we are showing them.
Since 2014, I have critiqued over 600 photographs through my membership sites, one on one discussions, and email. Would you be shocked to know that 1 out of every 2 or 3 images could benefit from a good crop? During these sessions, I have given a ton of advice about cropping for more effective compositions, and now I have put all of that information into this 90-minute course.
As photographers, we are at a severe disadvantage in the art world when it comes to composition. Painters, Illustrators, and Sculptors can add or subtract anything they want to from their working space with the stroke of a pen, brush, or chisel to make compelling compositions. Photographers, on the other hand, we have to create a compelling composition from the space that we are working in.
In this course, you will learn everything you need to know about building lasting compositions through the act of deliberate cropping!
What you will learn:
- Intro to Composition
- The Crop Tool in Photoshop
- Cropping in Camera
- Cropping for Composition in Post
- Cropping for the Subject in Post
- Cropping for Print
Lessons
01 Intro to Composition Comprehension
02 The Crop Tool
In Lesson 2, we will break down all of the aspects of the Crop Tool! That sounds like so much fun doesn’t it? I say that facetiously on purpose (facetiously is the only word in the English language with all of the vowels in order). The Crop Tool, while not the most incredible […]
03 In Camera Crop
There are several ways we can crop. Some would say it starts in camera, but it really starts when we walk up to the scene. We should be mentally cropping things with our mind to weed out distractions and find the best composition for the scene. The next step is to capture what we […]
04 Crop For Composition In Post
As you will find out over the next few lessons, there are several reasons why we crop our images. In this lesson, we will explore how to crop your image with compositional elements in mind such as the rule of thirds, symmetry, and the golden spiral. We are less focused on individual subjects here and […]
05 Cropping for the Subject In Post
In the last lesson, we discussed how to crop our photos with the whole image as a composition in mind. In this lesson, we will discuss how to crop specifically for the subject matter. In some cases, we can make our subject more prominent if we single it out and let the negative space […]
06 Crop for Print
Cropping for print is probably the most difficult task I ever had to wrap my head around in Photoshop. You have all these different things to keep in mind like Aspect Ratio, Image Size, and Resolution. The most valuable thing I ever learned while cropping for print is that the Crop tool can be […]
07 Conclusion – Cropping
This final video is more of a top down perspective and a refresher on all that you just learned about comprehending composition from the viewpoint of cropping. When I first planned the composition comprehension course, it had four subtitles. I had planned on creating one video for each subject, but as I began outlining the […]