Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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Some good tips Ant.
I had a thought when you were mentioning the direction our eyes naturally want to scan when viewing an image. I’m curious if cultures where the dominant language is written Right to Left (like Arabic or Hebrew) have different photography guidelines.
It seems logical that our natural tendencies when viewing an image might be influenced by the dominant written text of our culture.
Does anyone in the community have any personal experience with this?
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fair question and great point. I’ve only be abroad a few times, but noticed items such as ads still had the same “flow” in the places i visited. I’ll reach out to a friend of mine and see what he says/feels. THANKS for watching 
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Hey great show @ant_pruitt. I had a question on the topic of cropping. Are there any rules, err “guidelines,” on what I would call over-cropping when it comes to portraits? Someone (who will remain unnamed) in my family always sends me photos of my kids that have been digitally cropped in so far that they’re pixelated and a decent chunk of the kid’s head is cropped out (examply below). It would be great to have a guideline or rule of thumb to casually bring up in conversation. Haha.
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Thanks for watching and the kind words, @cuad. The pixelation will happen on files if they’re low resolution. Even on high res images, you can only crop in to a certain point before the image breaks down. This is when composing the shot before clicking the shutter comes in. Either get closer to the subject or use a nice zoom lens.
Far as “guideline,” I use Photoshop to enlarge images by at least 150% when I realize in post that I’m going to do some heavy cropping. Photoshop has a tool built in that will try to retain the detail when you enlarge. This has helped me in the past. I know everyone doesn’t have photoshop, but that’s what I do when I didn’t get the composition right before clicking the shutter.
Cropping tight in portraits can be to the taste of the artist or client. I found that a super tight crop on a portrait looks good (to me) when I go at least to half way mark of the forehead. It totally changes the mood of the image in most instances. Example attached.
Then there’s the idea of cropping off laterally where you cut someone in half. Example attached.
Then there’s the idea of using shadows as part of the “crop” where the shadow hides part of the subject. Example attached.
The best advise I can give on tight crops for portraits is to take symmetry of the subject into consideration. For my face, just below half of my forehead being cropped off leaves nice symmetry.
Hope this helps and made sense. Sometimes my rambling can confuse people. Keep practicing on different people and/or subjects. A bottle of beverage split laterally in half could lead to a nice looking ad copy.
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Maaan those are some cool portraits and that was a very helpful explanation. Thank you!
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((wipes brow)) whew! Glad that helped. Now go forth and #CreateAndDominate 
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and THANK YOU for the compliment
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I’m really enjoying these shows! I’m starting to do some post-processing (just easy stuff in snapseed or something like that) and figuring out how to crop an image is a great exercise in learning composition. Sometimes you can take a shot that turned out as a “mistake” and turn it into something cool.
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EXACTLY. Thanks for watching and sharing with others. I’m glad the show has helped ya 
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So, the first photo was the “mistake” photo because the camera focused on the grasses, which wasn’t my intention, so I cropped it to make it about the grasses. The second one is the shot I wanted. Valley Forge National Historic Park.
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Really enjoyed this episode, of course my wife Angela and I were the first subjects, but still I’m picking up pointers all the time thanks to @ant_pruitt.
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THANKS for sharing the pictures and your support.
Hope you’re doing well, bro
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Ant,
Thanks for using my photos, I appreciate the help as I try honing my skills. As I progress I’ll be looking at various editors, currently I have Pixelmator and Photoscape on my iMac 5K, I do basic cropping and adjustments but I need some practise getting round the GUI’s, a bit daunting at first, but I’ll get there.
Thanks
Andy
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My pleasure. Photoshop still gives me chills. Lol! I did this video as a favor to someone. Hopefully it can help you out.
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Thanks for this show! I just caught several episodes thanks to the composition show. Though I don’t do much real camera photography anymore, I still use my phone a lot! I’m really interested in topics around the ART of photography, from composition to cropping to ways of edit photos. I’m curious about WHY a photographer makes certain edits more than the tools to make them. I hope to see more about the how’s and why’s (that apply to any camera) rather than software and settings… Keep up the good work!
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Thanks for watching @Saguaro. Do you mind emailing hop@twit.tv so i can put this question in the queue. I have some ideas around it that may be helpful for you and others. Be sure to share HOP and FOP with others, too. #PleaseAndThankYou
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Great stuff Mr Pruitt, thank you. Saw this on Twitter and couldn’t help but post it in this thread. Don’t mind me…carry-on!
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Regarding cropping; Do you pay attention to, or try to maintain certain aspect ratios when you crop? On the show using Lightroom you didn’t seem to pay it any regard.
When using the iOS photo app, for example, it gives me the option to ‘freeform’ crop or stick to certain ratios.
Why would you, or why wouldn’t you want to have photos in a freeform cropped ratio vs fixed aspect ratios? Obviously more creative freedom using freeform, but only reason I can think of for fixed is is maybe wanting to put prints in frames? Or perhaps just to have all photos in a uniform standard format?
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LOL!!! Oh this is GOLD. Well played, sir. 
Thanks a lot for sharing and for watching and sharing the show.
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