HCB

Another thought on cropping, back to the idea that inside of each picture there is a smaller, better picture trying to get out.

Not everybody agrees. Some of those who disagree are very good photographers indeed.

Apparently, some believe you ought to compose pictures in the camera, and they go as far as printing photographs with the edge of the negative showing, so that they can prove that there was no editing. They call this margin, I believe, "verification margin" (of course, nowadays it can easily be faked on a computer), and are very proud of it. People of this persuasion track their lineage back to Henry Cartier-Bresson (I am trying to find out if he really expressed the idea attributed to him - I will write more about this when some books arrive from the library).

This view of begs a question: if you have taken a picture, and it is not great, should you throw it away? What if you could save it through a bit of cropping? What if you could save it by dodging and burning?

Here is a memorable picture by Stieglitz:

Alfred Stieglitz

Winter on Fifth Avenue

1892

and its much less memorable full negative: