Photography is the art of trying to translate what the photographer sees in their mind’s eye into a tangible photo. And so many times I see photos that are close, I can see what the photographer is trying to show, but the crop is too loose or the horizon is slanted, or something else that dilutes the meaning.
Many times, when editing photos, particularly those for my portfolio or to post on social media, I’ll spend 5-10 minutes trying to find the absolute best crop. It can be difficult in sports photography to clean up the backgrounds, considering every possible surface is covered with a logo or advertisement. But it’s necessary to get rid of as many distracting elements as possible, while still maintaining the integrity, or meaning, of the image.
If it doesn’t add to the image, it’s taking away (I didn’t say this first, but I think about it every time I’m trying to find the best crop).
Here’s a recent Braves example, from game 3 of the series against the Guardians at Truist Park. It was the 10th inning, and José Ramírez got caught stealing on a throw from Travis d’Arnaud to Orlando Arcia. After the tag, Arcia let out one of those celebratory yells that sports photographers live for — it can make for an awesome celebration photo.
But what elevated this reaction photo was a dejected Ramírez in the background, with his hands on his helmet knowing that this was a costly error. It’s a difficult task to get both of those emotions in the same frame in a way that really tells the story.
The next step for me was to crop the photo to eliminate any extraneous elements. This photo actually had the possibility to have the dejected player, the celebratory player, and an umpire making the call all in the same frame, but the timing was off just a little (like milliseconds). Check out the frame below (which has been cropped):
I know what many of your are saying, “this is a good frame!” Yes, I think it is too, the umpire’s reaction really helps tell the story. And you can see Ramírez reacting behind Arcia.
But there’s a couple of reasons I decided against this photo. First, the umpire’s back is to me and that takes up a lot of real estate in the frame. Secondly, to keep from cutting Arcia’s (right) hand off, there is a lot of dead space on the left of the frame. I wanted to post this frame to Instagram, and since a square or 4×5 (vertical) crop utilizes the most of amount of space on a phone screen, I wanted to see if one of those options would work.
So I started cropping:
This is a lot better than the original , but the umpire isn’t adding anything. So then I started trying the square crop:
I still wasn’t happy with this, but my thought was if I go any further the photo would break down. So I decided to keep going and completely eliminate the umpire and just focus on the two opposing reactions.
This is the final version! As you can see, comparing to the original photo, it’s a heavy crop. But thankfully I’m shooting with a Sony A1, so I’ve got a large file (50 megapixels) that can stand a big crop. I also used noise reduction with Lightroom to clean up some of the noise and grain.
From start to finish, I spent nearly 10 minutes editing this photo, most of which was tweaking the crop. The final version, in my opinion, best captures the emotions on display for this crucial play (Braves won in the bottom of the 10th with a walk-off single from Austin Riley).
When it comes to cropping, I always remember what one of my early mentors, Ben Gray, told me: “Crop it until you’ve gone too far … then bring it back until it’s perfect.”
