Photography

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A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

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communick@viewfinder.pro

Cropping photos - am I being unreasonable / ridiculous? (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by Sad_Manufacturer5931@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

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I often do work for a friend who has their own brand. I’m not a huge stickler about a little cropping but there is something that they have being doing that irks me and I’m looking for an honest perspective.

I shoot both portrait and landscape orientation - whatever I think is best for the shot. On instagram if you’re posting multiple photos in a single post, it automatically makes the aspect ratio of all photos the same as whatever the first photo is. What would make sense to me is making two posts with the different orientations seperately if there’s photos you like from both. What they have been doing is shoving all the photos into one post - so if the first photo is vertical all the horizontal ones will be extremely cropped in, or if the first is horizontal all the vertical ones are cut in half. It basically makes the photos the opposite aspect ratio of which they were shot.

Not only is the quality is lowered when it’s cropped in more than it was meant to be, but it completely changes the composition and often times just makes what I thought were good photos look straight up bad. Its a drastic change. This happens every time we shoot together.

I haven’t said anything yet and I’m wondering what others think. Am I getting annoyed over nothing? Should I let her do with the photos as she pleases? I just feel it’s representing my work poorly and it does kind of bother me.

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[–] rwzla@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

You're not getting annoying over nothing. part of the composition is the frame shape.

[–] titdirt@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

If you know the photos are going to be used exclusively for ig, I would ensure they're all exported in a way that minimizes the cropping IG will do. Also you could just send all photos in portrait mode to this specific client to have a little more control over how they turn out. It's annoying but most people who aren't photogs don't realize this so I try to mitigate this by giving them fewer options after editing.

[–] wreeper007@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

I wrote an action for situations like this with my work. It will detect portrait or landscape and place the image in a white square. Its not full size but the composition stays consistant.

There is also the possibility of using one of those apps for seamless scrolling.

[–] axelomg@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

The thing is, it might be annoying for you, but in reality the medium they want the pictures for is instagram and you failed to deliver for that medium… you wouldn’t hand over a couple of portrait pics for a billboard ad. They are doing the cropping work and you are annoyed because they are not doing a good job. But it’s actually your job.

And I know it sounds a bit harsh, but I’ve been there and this change of mindset is important. Ask what the medium is and deliver for that.

[–] mofozd@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

IG will cut your photos vertically so your original composition doesn't really matter, if you know she is going to do this why not cropped them yourself and give her options? at the end of the day she will do whatever she wants with the pictures at least this way you will have a say.

[–] travelin_man_yeah@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

The Insta cropping is totally annoying. I can post anything I like on FB in any aspect ratio and it gets posted in the native format. You think the geniuses at Insta could implement the same feature. They say the cropping is for consistency but I call BS....

[–] AlarmingStarPhantom@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

What would make sense to me is making two posts with the different orientations seperately if there’s photos you like from both.

this absolutely does not make any sense. if you use the platform for marketing you want to group the pictures by their content, not how they best suit the feelings of the photographer.

how do you push two different posts of the same thing? you lose reach and interaction, it doesn't make sense.

you need to learn that you're doing product photography here, not art. it's your job to make it work for your client, not the other way around. she's trying to sell her brand, not your photography.

what you should do is provide vertical shots only for her instagram. crop them to 4:5 for regular feed-posts and to 9:16 for stories and reels. that way you still have creative control and she can post them as she needs.

landscape is not suitable for instagram, especially when you're trying to sell something.