the crop
Yesterday I drove down the mountain to town to ship UPS and get a few groceries. I always carry a camera even for mundane trips…a leftover from my days working for a newspaper, for one never knows what will occur. It was foggy, and on the way home I made a few images in a place we call ‘the cut’. It is a half-mile gash in the rock where water runoff collects in a bog, lots of desiduous trees, and of course the paved road. As I looked over the images this morning, one stood out for its soft color, it’s geometrics. I immediately responded to it.
Fog in the Cut
The act reminded me again of those days as a newspaper photographer. As the morning deadline came closer and the intensity in the newsroom became more vibrant, the photographers would start pitching their images to the editors. If it was an image that went with a news story, then it got preference….the goal was to try to get on page one. So we would bring in our 8×10 printed on the smelly ektamatic machine paper, and try to sell the image to the editor. He would pull out a couple old envelopes and begin cropping. The space in the paper was sacred, every pica hallowed.
I was amazed….for as we zoomed in, cut away, removed the unnecessary, the image would become stronger. I would go away with a grease-penciled box around the chosen space, and a size scribbled on the edge. If there was time, I would go make another print to size. Usually there was no time for that, and I just went directly to the guy doing the copy camera work, gave him the specs….and went back to a typewriter to write a cutline caption.
So I now sit at my computer, with the image on the screen. Sometimes, I grab a couple envelopes forming an “L”, and hold them up to the screen, imagining a new border here or there. Sometimes it makes the image much better, or creates a whole new image with a different sense and presence.
Fog in the Cut (crop)