Crop – the action of removing the outer areas of a picture to give a greater emphasis to the main subject

The farmer showed me her crop but a lot of the outer edges had been removed.

Degas was interested in photography and the accidental cropping of figures in a snapshot. He used this idea in "The Dance Lesson" with the first seated dancer on the left and at the opposite end of the line where another dancers face and hands are all out of the frame. This cropping gives a more natural or authentic arrangement of people.

By Banksy (photograph by Sotheby's) - Sotheby's - https://twitter.com/Sothebys/status/1050434176414035968, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58733196

Cropping occurred at an auction of a Banksy painting called "Girl with a Balloon". During Sotheby's auction of the print in 2018, the print began descending through a shredder fitted inside the frame. It got stuck half way, leaving the head of the girl and the balloon cropped. Banksy renamed the painting "Love is in the Bin". The cropped image became worth more immediately after the painting was cropped.

Crop Project

For this project, you will need copies of or a photo (as we will be cutting them up, it's best not to use originals), some scissors and a viewfinder. The viewfinder can be as simple as a square or rectangle cut out of some card. You can make several different sizes.

Move the viewfinder around the copy of your photo and select the best place to crop. Think about what you want to focus on, see how the mood changes as you move the viewfinder around.

We have decided to go with the view below, because as you can see, it fits well with the rule of thirds. The horse fits neatly into the left hand side and the landscape is divided equally into horizontal thirds.

Draw around the inside edge of the viewfinder in pencil.

Cut off the excess outer areas. 

Crop.