Cropping and Framing

Are they two separate things? I think so.

Framing is about choice making, what you choose to take in an image, where the edges are, do you add the whole of something or only part of it. Is the image complete in itself?

All these descisions are best made when the image is taken, although there may be times when you know you will change the image shape – for instance- the picture you visualise is a square format, but your camera only takes rectangles, or you want an very wide panorama, and need to take and join multiple shots. The important bit is that you have framed the image you want in your minds eye.

Cropping is about how you get to what you actually wanted once you have the image, a bit off here, or a bit off there.

But- cropping could be seen as taking an image that only shows part of the whole, part of a head, a suggestion of a window rather than the whole scene.

The definition of cropping from the Collins dictionary is ‘the trimming or masking of unwanted areas from a negative or a print’. – a verb, while framing is ‘the act of a person or a thing that frames’ – a noun. So cropping is something you do to an image, while framing is something that is!