“Crop my picture and you’re a dead man.” That’s what David Page, one of the contributors to my books, Digital Photography Secrets, said to me in an email when he submitted one of his pictures for publication. After his demand was a happy face!

Basically, David, a heck of a nice guy and former fine art photographer and teacher at Duke University, was asking, in a nice way, that his image not be cropped.

David’s comment was the inspiration for a column that I wrote for Layers magazine.

I agree 100 percent with David's philosophy. To me, and to most of my photographer friends, cropping in-camera and in the digital darkroom is one of the keys to a good image – a good exposure and an interesting subject being among the other key ingredients that make a good photograph.

In fact, when I work with publishers, including my friends at Layers magazine, the only request I have is to please not crop my pictures. It’s a request that surely makes the art director’s job more difficult, and I appreciate their extra effort.

Cropping goes hand-in-hand with composition, because if you have an expertly composed photograph and then it’s cropped poorly, the composition goes down the tubes, or maybe to Davy Jones’ Locker, according the David Page.

Explore the Light,

Rick