All to often we forget about cropping our images. I think we would all do ourselves a favour if we did more of it. See more of these wonderful animals in As I Found It’s Birds & Animals Gallery Now that we are firmly in the age of digital images we can loosen up on some of the constraints forced upon us in the days of film and paper. Now don’t get the wrong impression I am a child of that time and my film and paper experience is over 40 years while my digital experience is only 10. That is a 3:1 ratio. Pre-made frames and pre-cut mats if used, form constraints. We always lived with them. I was very lucky I learned to cut my own mats early on. That meant I was not totally at the mercy of pre-cut stuff or the custom framers. All that means is could do what my eye and creative muse said.
I am very fortunate, my daughter Zoe is a highly skilled professional framer and mat cutter. She indulges me perhaps more then others might. More often then not my images are just fine at some standard aspect ratio and presented in some standard size. Not always though. This shot of the Big Horne sheep is one of those times. I have photographed this herd several times over the years. It lives near the hamlet of Eckshaw, just east of Banff National Park. If one gets off the Trans Canada highway and takes a side road, you must slow down but you often get to see these majestic creatures and they are more then willing to pose for you too. The might is flat but the subject makes up for that.
All that aside the top image was cropped to produce the second one. I could have done this differently of course. I judged that isolating the ram from the others produced a better narrative. I judged the rocks and snow were of much less interest the viewer then his face and his lunch, the texture of his fir more so then the dry grasses. I just cropped where I wanted knowing full well this image will probably never be printed but it will be viewed electronically thousands of times. In effect this is a portrait of the ram. See more here.
