One of the main advantages to LF photography is the big negative. Does that make you compose a little more loosely, knowing that you can crop and still have plenty of negative for a good sized enlargement? I know for those contact printing you have to compose for the full negative. I enlarge from a 4X5 negative/transparency and I hate when I don't use the full thing. I have one shot that will make a nice picture if I crop down to about 6X9. I should be happy about that but instead I beat myself up for not framing it properly in the first place.
I make the best print my skills allow. If that means cropping so be it. Are you using an oversized glass negative carrier to show 100% of the negative?
I get full scans and then print and/or crop and print digitally. Yes, I start out with the full image. I usually finish with the full image as well - or awfully close to it. When I crop it is usually because something made it into the image that I didn't see and don't want.
http://gallery.photo.net/photo/1886558-lg.jpg
This is closer to the full image of the first picture. It is full wide.
This was one of the more interesting questions at the recent LF meet in Monterey. It is similar to the following.
Question: "If a banjo and an accordian are both dropped from the Empire State Building at the same time, which one hits the ground first?"
Answer: "Who cares."
In the answer lies your answer. It depends on who is saying what about croppoing as to the weight the answer carries. Your opinion of their answer is most important as to right and wrong.
Don't beat yourself up, acknowledge to yourself that there is no way you can have the exactly correct focal length lens for every scene you want to photograph. Often you can't position your tripod in the exactly correct place. Frequently, filling the frame will mean including a distracting element. Not every scene is arranged in a 4 to 5 ratio. Crop away and be happy.
To get to the question more directly, the big negative does not make me (or apparently you) much more comfortable with cropping. There is tremendous pride among amateur photographers about their composition. I think professionals must be more realistic; besides, they are not in control as much as their editors. (This is where the black line showing the borders of the negative comes from; Magnum stipulated that images from this organization must be printed full frame to insure the integrity of what their photographers intended ended up on the pages.)
Pride goith… After almost 20 years, I have relaxed my standards. I crop more frequently now. I shoot fewer images. I shoot larger negatives too. I must say all these changes in my shooting are related. I hope this is a full answer to your post.
Many of us started out in 35mm. I did. My early training was as a photo journalist, and I learned that I needed to fill my frame, both on film (35mm is a small film) and on paper (either I did it or the editors did).
I must say, it's a hard habit to shake. But I'm getting better at it. I'm trying much more to let the scene dictate the aspect ratio. The more I work with LF, the more I think it's silly for me to try to impose an arbitrary aspect ratio on every scene I encounter.
I did try an experiment. I masked off part of the ground glass to impose a different aspect ratio. In this case, the golden ratio (3.1x5). I found that this was just as restrictive as 4x5, and that I could no more will a scene into that ratio than I could will it into 4x5.
After some study and thought, I've concluded that I tend to see things -- to be drawn to scenes to photograph -- that more closely align with the 3:4 ratio. In other words, I tend to crop a little off the top and bottom of the frame.
This isn't bad. It's not good either. It just is. While experimenting with aspect ratios was an interesting study and an interesting learning experience, I am not loosing any sleep over it. One of the joys of LF is that the film area is so large that doing some cropping just doesn't matter. Unless you are into contact printing ;-)
When all is said and done, and your photographs are finished and mounted, no one cares if they are cropped or not. That being said, I have never cropped a photograph and do not advise it. Cropping is an admission of failure to see creatively.
Now, what exactly is cropping? I believe that if what you are photographing either does not fit the format of your ground glass or if for some other reason, such as not having enough of a lens selection, you need to get closer but cannot, and you see, at the time of exposure, that you want to use less than the full negative, then by all means use less than the full negative. I do not consider that cropping.
What I think of as cropping is after you make your first work print you look at it and then decide that it is not very good and would be made better if you, say, cut off the left edge by an inch. In these cases, unless it is one of the greatest and most profound photographs ever made, which will be doubtful for any of us, myself included, that you give yourself a swift kick and vow to see more carefully the next time. After a while, seeing the photograph complete on the ground glass will be second nature. There is a great joy and satisfaction (at least there is for me), when the picture comes together on the ground glass.
It is a also lot easier not to crop--the prints are all the same size; mount board and overmats are always the same size; and printing times, if you are enlarging, can quickly be guessed accurately because the enlarger is always at the same height.
But in the end it really doesn't matter whether you crop or not. Whether you do or not is a function of where you get the greatest excitement in the process of making your photographs.
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