More on FAQ #851

  • 851. Why do respected news agencies allow cropping?

    There are multiple reasons that photographers and image providers crop photos, which can be done without deception:

    • to eliminate superfluous or distracting pictorial material; or

    • to fit the photograph into a certain proportion; or

    • to allow “shooting looser [more wide-angle] and cropping later” to provide multiple options from a single image.

  • But what about deception?

    There’s nothing inherently “deceptive” about cropping, especially when it is not done to an extreme (most news organizations that say anything about their cropping policy declare that they allow “limited” cropping).

    Of course, cropping can be done deceptively, and any cropping judged to incompatible with rinairs will not meet P7 and could not qualify as TTG.

    But cropped photographs need not be problematic from a “trust” perspective.

  • Why limited cropping isn't usually considered problematic

    Cropping doesn’t change the perspective or the relative sizes of the things in the photo (cropping provides the same effect as using a longer focal-length lens).

    Almost every photograph ever made has been “cropped” at the moment it was taken, including billions of new photos being made every day.

    That’s because lenses create a cone-shaped beam of light that casts a round image inside the camera, while most cameras record only a square or rectangular portion of that round image.

  • It isn't just cropping that cuts things out of the picture; photographers do it too

    How the photographer positions the camera and frames the scene before the shutter is even clicked is a highly selective process, leaving far more out of the picture than is included.

    Every lens that can record single exposures “crops” part of the scene around the camera.

    The longer the focal length, the more is “cropped out” of the picture.