This Monochrome Monday I thought I would show a pretty heavy crop example. This is taken at a nearby harbour before all of the boats were in the water. Since the lakes freeze over with ice around 50 centimetres thick, the boats must all come out by late Autumn or their hulls will be crushed. I like shooting in this location at different times of the year.
I did a heavy crop on this to show that with shots such as this (long exposure) it is possible to do and still maintain decent quality without it getting too heavily grained. You can see that there is grain though but in black and white, I actually don't mind the texture of it as in my opinion, black and white 'should' be a little degraded.
I do also like the very, very sharp black and whites too sometimes, and there are some great examples of those around these days. This has been made easier by the equipment photographers use now and the fact that they don't have to develop it onto paper as the enlarging from film will soften edges too.
I included the original so you can see the area it has been cropped from. I obviously straightened my crooked stance. Well, I didn't have a tripod with me and leaned the camera on a pole so the angle is what it was. Cropping can change the story of the picture quite dramatically as it changes the focal points and main subject matter. In the original below, the lit boat is what draws the eye first and the small boat in the water is irrelevant noise.
In the crop, there is a juxtaposition between the out of water boat and the small boat has become much more prominent and important to the image. You could imagine that there is a David and Goliath battle where size has slowed the large so it no longer is capable of its original purpose and the leaning light with one globe blown highlights this, while the small boat goes about its business.
When something gets large enough, attention is drawn to it and this creates a more vulnerable position as both successes and failures become more prominent. The successes are often downplayed but the failures are emphasised as many like to see the tall fall heavily.
Imagine seeing someone shoplift a candy bar from the corner store. You watch them look around cautiously to see if someone is watching but don't notice you and then quickly shave the bar into their pocket and move away. Now imagine that person was the leader of your country.
This is the same with the self-voting comments here. If a big fish does it, it is obviously going to drain the pool and be quite noticeable as the light is always on them. Many of the little fish do not like this behaviour as they watch the rewards fall dramatically. But, when a hundred thousand little fish do it? No one sees and it goes unmentioned.
Perhaps it is because people feel more sympathetic to the little fish in some way. Watching a child steal a candy bar can be justified perhaps as the child may not know any better or be hungry but watching someone like the leader of a country, who has the means and definitely should know better do it, comes across as very wrong to most.
Most people were outraged and Trump's 'pussy grabbing' comments a while ago, but many women have had such things happen to them at bars by drunk guys at some point. Why is there the double standard? Why isn't each incident reported?
We are hypocritical by nature I think as when it comes to ourselves and people like us, we can justify our bad behaviour through necessity or because of external pressures we cannot control. We don't however carry that charity through to others, especially those we do not like or those that are larger than us.
We see their bad behaviour as the reason for our position perhaps an that becomes the catalyst for our own poor actions. I guess it comes down to personal morals and ethics. Most don't seem to want to look to closely at their own actions though.
I am guessing if you got this far, you weren't expecting a photography post to go this way... Neither was I. Perhaps if I had cropped the picture differently it wouldn't have.
Shot details:
[ Olympus EM-1 | ISO400 | 40mm | f4 | 3.2s ]
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]