#74 Cropping a Photo aka Evolution of My Life Odyssey

Life’s odyssey – a long, eventful, or adventurous experience. As I reach my last year of 60s, I have been pondering about my lifestyle. Is it broad enough or is it too broad. Let me elaborate what I meant. It is NOT all about goals, desires and aspirations at this point in my life. Did I have too many that I was disappointed or do I have enough to have a fulfilling rest of my life? In a moment of clarity, it came together all because of a simple photographic exercise I undertook recently. Read on.

In Photography, cropping is an indispensable tool that is used for various reasons. Typically, you are trying to answer the following:

Do I want a (more) balanced composition?
Do I want a closer look?
Am I removing unnecessary elements or unneeded blank space?
Am I trying to simplify the scene?
Am I trying to get a better, more energetic or compelling storytelling composition?
Does the subject need more breathing room?
Am I trying to get a certain aspect ratio for framing?
….

Or a combination thereof of the afore mentions reasons and perhaps many other reasons.

Recently, I did a cropping exercise on an image I took in Vietnam, of a bride belonging to Red Dao tribe in their village. The below image is the original image as originally composed. This was a semi-candid shot, in natural light. As the subject was stepping out, I took the (candid) shot, and she quickly posed making it a semi-candid shot.

I tend to crop the portraits very close since I like to emphasize the expression on the subject’s face.

I truly believe the close up evokes a different feeling than the original above does and that is what I was going after, a journey where I am learning to change the tone of an image through cropping the image. I fact, you can actually see yours truly’s reflection in her eyes. But I digress.

When I posted the above image to a FB group that is run by local professional photographers, one of the well-respected fellow members (RS) asked for my original to try his vision of cropping and I gladly provided him the same. That gentleman, a professional portrait photographer, gave me two versions of his crop which I included below.

The clever thing he did in the second version of the image is that he tilted the image a tad to right, again using crop tool, to give the image an element of dynamism, according to him.

So, I did a close crop of the same image and here is my version of the close crop.

As I was looking at these images, it occurred to me that a few of the questions that are asked when cropping is fully applicable to my life journey. It struck me that I can draw parallel to my life journey with the exercise I undertook in cropping. Take the first image for example, it is the complete image or as in life journey at that time of my life, I would call it the big picture. My early days of education, and career offered me different options, and I had many degrees of freedom. Once I chose engineering as my education choice, my degrees of freedom were curtailed. Similarly, as I started my career, similarly my degrees of freedom in career became narrow as well. As it were, I did not have to pivot in my career, for better or worse.

As time progressed my career and life as well became narrower in focus and it went from wide and short to narrow and tall. Life as a single with unlimited choices and fewer responsibilities transitioned into marital bliss that morphed journey to not so unlimited choices and more responsibilities. Unlike the first image, the space around my career and life became lesser. As time progressed, the space around me kept disappearing, I have become more set in my ways, and my focus has become very narrow. But as the images indicate (at least to me), the beauty of my life has not diminished. The things I do have become more defined and more set. At this stage in my life, all that matters to me is my well-being and the happiness of my family and friends. I no longer think in an ego-centric way to be happy. My odyssey is a memory whose lanes I walk down often and with nostalgia. Well, I still salivate looking at some of those lenses and new camera bodies. I never claimed to be perfect.

Epilog: I hope this little article showcases why I love photography. In a moment of epiphany, I realized that the simple exercise of cropping an image or the exercise of cropping thereof, has summarized my existential journey so far, so succinctly, and more importantly, so accurately. I would welcome your thoughts on this inference, very much.