Shoot wide for more options

By and large it’s a good idea to get your images as perfect as possible in camera. Relying on Photoshop to bail you out of a hole is always second best. But when it comes to cropping, getting it right in camera isn’t always the best way to work.

This is something I learned as a wedding photographer taking group shots. When I first started I’d compose the shot in camera ensuring that the people on the ends of line up were just inside the image. That works fine until someone orders an 8”x10” print and you have to crop off the ends or grow more photo at the top and bottom. Neither was a good way to work.

The answer is simply to leave more space around the subject and get the perfect the crop in Photoshop. Take a look at this image to see what I mean.

Here I’ve left space around the door panel so I choose how to crop the final shot later.

This is the same image as before, but this time I've cropped in in Photoshop. Had I cropped in camera and only taken the above shot (the one I knew I wanted) then I would have had to do some serious Photoshop work to make the following image.

This image was taken on today’s photo training session. Many thanks to Melanie and Michael for placing and pruning the ivy.

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