Nostalgia & History > To Crop or Not To Crop

There is a rule in photography that says don't put the subject in the center of the frame. It's called the Rule of Thirds. Exceptions to applying the Rule of Thirds are few.

Why is the Rule of Thirds ignored. First, there is that circle in the center of the view finder that must have something to do with focus and light reading. Obviously you are supposed to put the circle on the subject. Wrong. Do your light reading and focusing in an appropriate place in the scene, holding the shutter half way down, frame the photo and shoot.

Second, railfans start early taking pictures without anyone to teach them how. They don't take photography courses. Most are not too serious about train photography, taking only a few train photos a month and never studying their work to learn from their mistakes, mistakes they may not recognize.

Back to don't put the subject in the center. When I scanned this picture of Roger Puta's my reaction was why did he center the caboose. So I tried a slight crop of the left and bottom. Roger was right. One of the exceptions to the Rule of Thirds is symmetry. Roger was right to maintain the symmetry.


What do you think?
Marty Bernard



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/17 00:33 by MartyBernard.

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In railroad photography the rule of thirds sometimes works but sometimes doesn't; i don't know what the exact split would be but i think the majority of shots where the train/hardware are the main subject of the photo, the centre of frame approach works best.
Probably this is at least partly to do with the linear/left-right form of trains, if you leave an open space to one side (i.e. follow the rule of thirds) the linearity can draw your eye to the space and away from the subject, making it look odd. This contrasts with something orientated vertically like a tree or person, where the rule of thirds doesn't pull your attention to the frame edge but puts the subject in a pleasing context.

From the title I thought this was going to be about thread about farming... ;-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/17 00:25 by exhaustED.

exhaustED Wrote:
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> In railroad photography the rule of thirds
> sometimes works but sometimes doesn't; i don't
> know what the exact split would be but i think the
> majority of shots where the train/hardware are the
> main subject of the photo, the centre of frame
> approach works best.

I disagree. The center of the frame works worst. It leaves about 1/3 (or more) of the frame full of non-train stuff. If the non-train stuff is beautiful scenery or important to the photo train-related stuff, great. But leaving 1/3 of the frame devoid on content, makes the train smaller. Use the whole frame for the train. With modern zoom lenses and cropping with a photoeditor, obeying the Rule of Third is so much easier.

Marty

I would argue that the bottom third in the original image is pretty well "devoid of content." The left side beyond the signal isn't all that interesting either, except maybe for a better view of the clouds doing their "lines of convergence" bit in combination with the clouds on the right to focus attention on the caboose. It's a nice photo, don't get me wrong, but given the choice, I prefer the cropped version. I might have even shaved some more off the bottom.

MartyBernard Wrote:
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> exhaustED Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > In railroad photography the rule of thirds
> > sometimes works but sometimes doesn't; i don't
> > know what the exact split would be but i think
> the
> > majority of shots where the train/hardware are
> the
> > main subject of the photo, the centre of frame
> > approach works best.
>
> I disagree. The center of the frame works worst.


> It leaves about 1/3 (or more) of the frame full of
> non-train stuff. If the non-train stuff is
> beautiful scenery or important to the photo
> train-related stuff, great. But leaving 1/3 of
> the frame devoid on content, makes the train
> smaller. Use the whole frame for the train. With
> modern zoom lenses and cropping with a
> photoeditor, obeying the Rule of Third is so much
> easier.
>
> Marty

Of course it depends on exactly what you mean by rule of thirds; the shot in this thread had the subject and the horizon in the centre - in cropping it you did two things, you shifted the horizon down but you also cropped to the left.... The rule of thirds isn't just about what to do with the subject, but with the horizon as well. In essence your question was a little simplistic, so not surprisingly you've confused my answer slightly...not wanting to sound critical.
In fact you could argue in one sense that the rule of thirds was at least partially followed in that first photo - look at the position of the signal masts, one-third in from each edge. To be honest i'm not a huge fan of either photo we're discussing, seems like a bit of a grab shot!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/17 04:41 by exhaustED.

Without generalizing to other photos, on this particular frame I think the cropped version works better. 

The uncropped would be good for the lead photo of a magazine article, with the first few paragraphs in white text against the dark shadows. 

My version seems a little like Evan described.

Ed

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I'm with Evan and Ed on this one. The drama in the image is created by the interplay of the setting sun, the clouds and the caboose. The lower left portion of the image is so dark that it's irrelevant.

Gerry

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Good discussion. Marty

MartyBernard Wrote:
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> There is a rule in photography that says don't put
> the subject in the center of the frame. It's
> called the Rule of Thirds. Exceptions to applying
> the Rule of Thirds are few.

Someone said learn the rules of photography, then break them.

This guy doesn't think much of the Rule of Thirds:

https://petapixel.com/2016/01/30/10-myths-about-the-rule-of-thirds/

The point being, don't be a slave to a rule, and don't judge a photo as a failure because it doesn't satisfy a rule.


>
> Why is the Rule of Thirds ignored. First, there
> is that circle in the center of the view finder
> that must have something to do with focus and
> light reading. Obviously you are supposed to put
> the circle on the subject. Wrong. Do your light
> reading and focusing in an appropriate place in
> the scene, holding the shutter half way down,
> frame the photo and shoot.

My camera for years, a 1966 Nikon F bought used, didn't have a meter. So I had to learn exposure the only way you should, by the eye. You can't trust meters. I ruined many a shots before learning the subtleties of light and film.

I think this is a case where the obvious symmetry of the subject (A pair of tracks with a signal on either side) is served well be emphasizing it with symmetry in the photo. A more extreme example would be a head-on shot between two signals - put it in the middle to make a point.

Mark

I think there are times when the Rule of Thirds doesn't apply.

1. In a close-up where all you want in the photo is the subject, i.e., a straight on shot of the front of a locomotive. See Photo 1 as an example.

2. Symmetry of the objects where using the Rule of Thirds would ruin the symmetry. See Photo 2.

3. The photo has two or more subjects. As in Photo 3.

Note, all three photos are Roger Puta's.

Marty Bernard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/17 12:39 by MartyBernard.

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Looks like we were thinking the same thing at the same time, Marty.

Mark

phthithu,

I did no leveling of the photo. The first picture at the top of the thread is essentially how it came off the scanner. I did noise reduction and sharpening but no rotation or lightening. The non-level horizon didn't bother me, probably since the first vertical I saw was the near signal mast.

Also, I think the lightening of the foreground to show blue ballast detracts from the photo by adding an unnecessary and uninteresting element. The lightening also make the sky look more like daytime.

Marty

phthithu Wrote:
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> If you jack up the shadows you can see there was a
> lot of nice ballast in the shot. Roger was
> probably composing with that ballast in mind but I
> guess it was a bit dark than he was hoping for.

You have to understand it was a different game back then.

I've read where the dynamic range of K25, and most color consumer-grade films, was about 4 to 5 stops. This compared to digital where the range is now about 16 or 17 and going higher, almost at the level the eye can discern (I believe the eye is no more capable than about 21 to 24 stops, but the science is complicated). Roger by this time was shooting exclusive K25.

When confronted with a high-contrast shot such as this, you had to make a decision: blow away the highlights, or let the shadow turn to mud. You couldn't have both, as you can with many digital cameras.

The other factor in exposure was how will it most likely be displayed? Back then it was either magazines or your local slide show gathering. For us, it was the slide show. We factored our exposure based on the best possible consumer-grade display at the time, which was a Kodak projector, with the bulb on high-bright, projecting the image no more than 6 feet, on a large Da-light, white beaded screen, in an absolutely dark room. There were a number of us who gathered, including Roger, where we would go over our best efforts from our latest trips, and start to pick it apart, like composition and exposure ("you should have let it open a 1/3 to 1/4) In terms of color saturation or hue, we had virtually no control. So in shots like this, you had to make a decision, open up and get the ballast, and risk blowing out the caboose, or lose the ballast and make a showing of the caboose. We didn't have photoshop to correct our mistakes.

We had no idea what was ahead for railroad photography, either from the production (film) to the distribution (monitors as opposed to reflective screens). If we did, we may have done things a little differently, but maybe not. I've come to learn that with a film-to-digital transfer, if the film is a positive (i.e. slides), it would have been better to slightly overexpose, because more information could be saved at the high end. And if the transfer is a negative, it would have been better to slightly underexpose.

In the end you're limited by the medium and its execution, and no amount of photoshop is going to make it look like a digital, because the original information is gone. By raising the shadows, it introduces artifacts, sometimes to an annoying degree. If the highlights are blown out, they're gone forever. Maybe down the road there'll be software that learns (AI) what should be there and fill in the missing information.

I've seen some absolutely stunning photos on Trainorders over the last few years. In many cases they would be impossible to capture on film, at least the films that were available to us. And I remember discussions among friends when digital cameras came on the market, that they would never reach the quality of film. We couldn't have been more wrong.

MartyBernard Wrote:

> Also, I think the lightening of the foreground to
> show blue ballast detracts from the photo by
> adding an unnecessary and uninteresting element.
> The lightening also make the sky look more like
> daytime.

I'm not in favor of lightening the shadows, either. Good composition is always in season, of course, but for glint shots, a lot of the impact also comes from the stark contrast between the bright, reflected sunlight and the adjacent black shadows. Glint shots need contrast, and brightening the black areas to hazy blue-gray destroys that.

phthithu Wrote:
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> Marty, did you alter the leveling of the slide? If
> so did you do it so that the near signal mast was
> vertical?


Roger during this time always shot on a tripod with a level.

This photo is shot with a wide angle. He had a 35MM perspective correcting (PC) lens, and a 28MM PC. The 28MM was very slow, and with K25 in this light, it would probably be a no go. He also had a fast 24MM, non-PC, and if memory serves me right, a relatively slow 20MM non-PC. I can't remember when Nikon's fast 24mm was available, but I don't think it was at this time. By the looks of the bending, I'd say this was one of the non-PC wide angles, which gives the impression of the bending of so-called vertical lines at the edge (who's to say signals are plumbed?).

That's another factor to consider when you shoot with a mild to extreme wide angle that didn't offer PC capabilities. If the y-axis (the vertical axis) of the plane of the film is not level, then the bending effect is increased, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. That's why you would want to level the camera horizontally as well as vertically. By doing so, without significant elevation, you would get equal parts ballast with equal parts sky. So Roger may have made a decision to keep as little bending as possible, more than eliminating the ballast. Who knows?

That said, even though we leveled horizontally, Kodak may not have the correct mounting (though rare), and when scanning sometimes there's leeway in the slide through the mechanism, where it's not scanned perfectly level. My scanner has this problem.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/17 19:55 by BCHellman.

I have corrected a fair amount of keystoning in Roger's wide-angle shots.

Marty

>
> But the picture is underexposed. I believe Roger
> meant to go a full stop brighter, imho.

We have no idea how dark the slide was 32 years ago.

Also I agree that the caboose is not the subject. What Roger did was find a really neat way to take pictures of the signals, i.e., with a sunset and a caboose.

Here are a couple of his photos taken maybe a hour before the one we are discussing.

https://flic.kr/p/VWTwNz
https://flic.kr/p/VTBgNA


Also, I'm not sure that Roger knew the rule of thirds. I have found many of his photos that violate the Rule, but shouldn't have, with the locomotive centered and the train trailing off in one direction, with at least 1/3 of the photo filled with nothing of interest.

Marty

MartyBernard Wrote:
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> I have corrected a fair amount of keystoning in
> Roger's wide-angle shots.
>
> Marty


Can you show a before and after?

Thanks.