.. in the eye of the beholder …
Toronto. And another apology to Will for this riff on his famous line in act III of Hamlet.
When I first bought a 35mm camera, I soaked up as much then current wisdom as possible. I was told to move myself and/or change lenses so that most of the negative covered my intended framing. To crop post exposure in the darkroom would lead to poorer resolution and an increased grainy appearance in the print.
Most newspapers of the day cropped every shot to fit the column width and column inches reserved for a photograph and to heck with the photographer’s aesthetics. To allow for this more rigorous cropping, most photographs were from larger cameras.
The odd newspaper, like the New York Times, did not generally crop photographs to fit but cropped if necessary to the taker’s aesthetics instead.
PHSC member, professional photographer/videographer, and good friend, George Dunbar writes, “What are we to learn about the proper cropping of photos when we see a news image such as this from the NYTimes? I suspect there are few other newspapers in North America that would be this creative with an image.
“I’ve always admired the unusual and powerful ways that photographs are displayed in the New York Times. This is a fine example. Readers are expected to pause and study a photo, rather that just dismiss it without any thought. The NYTimes is outstanding in that respect – in my humble opinion.”
Most newspapers used images to convey information; the Times used them to both convey information and to be a kind of art form as the originator intended.
