“Show Notes”
Marcus says the show was triggered by a client he had recently who wanted images cropped in a very specific way.
Back in the days of film Marcus says it was a lot simpler and to some photographers it was a badge of honour not to crop their images. There were of course a great deal of different film sized and ratios back then including:
35mm – which were a 2×3 ratio
6cmx6cm so a 1×1 ratio 6×7 ratio
was also possible for magazine covers.
Large format 5×4 was also available
There also camera specifically for panoramic images that were a range of formats and sizes. Back then once you had chosen your film that was about it. Now with websites and social media these is so more to think about and so many different sizes. And when shooting you need to think about what crop you will use at the end.
For example a website header might be a 2:1 ratio, quite cinematic, while an Instagram reel will be 16×9 in portrait mode, which is very challenging to shoot. Sam says when shooting for a website you need to remember that the images will be auto-croppped so it needs to cope with a range of crops. Marcus says when shooting a website banner think first about if there will be text over the image. If there will be ask for an overlay so you can work out where the text would go on the image. View finders allow you to have crop marks (like rule of thirds) and these can help you think about the final crop you will have.
There are lots of sizes needed for social. For example for a profile banner a really wide thin shot is needed. Because there is such a range of image sized needed it’s important to ask the client what the client is going to use the images for. It’s a great value add for the customers providing them with pre-cropped images for different platforms and uses. Doing this also ensure that your images are shown in their best light when used.
Marcus loved the square Instagram photograph format, but with the move to reels being more popular, then this is a move away from squares to 16×9 portrait. As he has said before this is a challenging format to shoot in. When thinking about cropping you also need to think about file size. If you are going to heavily crop an image you need to ensure it is a large file size that can cope with the crop.
Marcus suggests another thing that can make you stand out from other photographers is making videos from still images and giving them to your client. Marcus suggests using Canva for this and Sam suggests using CapCut. Marcus says making gifs for clients is another thing you can do them.
“Show Transcription”
Sam: Hi Marcus, how are you doing?
Marcus: Oh, I’m very well, thank you, Sam. How are you?
Sam: Excellent, very good, very good. I’m looking forward to another show, and Marcus, I think you’ve been busy researching images and social media and things for us, haven’t you?
Marcus: Yeah, I’m going to be talking about cropping, Sam. Cropping for social media and other things, of course, which is probably not the easiest thing to do on a podcast because it’s quite a visual thing, but hopefully, it will work out and our listeners will get something out of this.
Marus: Hi there, it’s Marcus. A quick plug, if I may, for my online portfolio reviews. These are just perfect for the photographer who wants to get better clients and, of course, make more money. They are an hour long, one-to-one, and they are recorded on Zoom, so that means I can send you a copy. For the hour, it’s only £95, and you can sign up via my website on the tuition page. So, thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing you there.
Sam: Excellent, so tell us about cropping, Marcus.
Marcus: Yeah, well, this was triggered by a job I did recently for a creative design agency, and they were very specific about what crop they wanted the images done at, which, you know, is quite normal for me, and I just thought, well, you know, this may be something that we could dig into a little bit more, and our listeners will find value.
Sam: So, are you thinking of this for photographers’ own business or for their clients, or a bit of both?
Marcus: It’s for clients, I think, really, yeah. I mean, back in the day, you know, with film photography, things seemed to be a little bit simpler.
Sam:It was very hard to get it from film onto Facebook, though, Marcus; that was really hard.
Marcus: So, historically, it was never seen to be the— it was a badge of honour, as it were, not to crop your images. What you see is what was taken, and that is how the photographer envisaged it. That was the sort of message, and in fact, it went to the lengths where, when you would see a photograph sometimes printed in a book or magazine or exhibition, the photographer would include the rebate on the image, the negative rebate, and you’ll see that with a black line that goes around the edge. You’re nodding. Have you seen that before, Sam?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, and sometimes you even get those strips at the bottom of the image, or is that just for show when you get that?
Marcus: The strips? I’m not quite sure.
Sam: You know, when you get the— like, you almost see the sprocket holes at the bottom and the top.
Marcus: Yeah, that’s similar, that’s right, yeah, that’s like a— yeah, that’s exactly right, and you get the names of the films sometimes on it. But it was done to show that this image was not cropped; it was how the photographer intended it. So, as I say, it was like a badge of honour, this was like a code that we kept to. And then to accommodate the different sizes, you could get different size film cameras. For example, we know the 35mm camera is like a ratio of two by three, you know, you’ve got two inches or whatever at the top and three inches on the bottom on the vertical in the portrait. And then you get cameras that would be medium format cameras that would be like a six-six ratio, a six-centimetre by six-centimetre ratio, so those would be square, six by six, as opposed to two by three. You’d also get cameras that would shoot a six-by-seven ratio, and these would be used more for, like, doing magazine covers as opposed to the inside. So when you were shooting those days, you’d be thinking, am I going to be shooting for a cover, in which case you’d shoot it in portrait mode, or would it be for a spread inside the magazine or whatever, and it would tend to be in landscape mode, or yeah, or which would be a double-page spread or a single-page spread would tend to be in portrait mode.The other format you used to be able to get up for film cameras was a really old-fashioned one, which was like a single sheet film, large format, a single sheet, which was a five-inch by four-inch negative. Very nice ratio, that five by four is actually a very nice ratio for portraits, even landscapes.
Sam: But moving on, it’s all gone a little bit more complicated now, Marcus.
Marcus: Yeah, I’m going to get on to it, let me just finish off what I was just saying about— because there’s just one, just a couple more formats I want to talk about. And these were the film cameras which were actually specifically for panoramic, and these were made by companies like Hasselblad did one, which was an X-pan camera. It was basically, when you did a shoot, it was two 35mm negatives in one, so you get a really long panoramic, really, really nice. And also, you got Fuji made a camera that was a six, a medium format camera that I used once for an advertising campaign, and it was six by seventeen, which was three negatives in one. The quality was amazing. And then, of course, finally, we got those cameras which I’m sure you remember, Sam, the one that we did with our school photos which had the revolving lens to it.
Sam: Which, yeah, there was a badge of honour, wasn’t it, to be on both ends of the photograph to do a quick run-around.
Marcus: That’s right, exactly. So, back in the day, that is how we dealt with different formats, but really there was, you know, there wasn’t much demand for different formats, it tended to be just portrait or landscape and used full frame. Nowadays, Sam, as you say, it’s a completely different bag. Social media websites have just opened up this whole plethora of different crop factors that you have to deal with and you need to be aware of when you’re doing the shoot. For example, you might say for a website, you’d want the header at the top would be like a cinematic ratio, like a two by one, a 16 by 9, a 16 by 10, and yet a reel for, like, Instagram would be 16 by 9, but it would be in portrait mode, which is very difficult to shoot, you know, our cameras aren’t really— the viewfinders aren’t really designed to shoot in that format, so you have to do things that will help you shoot in those formats, and that’s what this show is really about, how we can get to these different formats.
Sam: Yeah, and then also, when you’re thinking about photos, like you’re saying, those top images on a website, the other thing you need to think about is actually it’s going to look different on different people’s devices, so you can’t think, oh, well, that is perfect at the rule of thirds. It kind of doesn’t apply because this photo may have some of it be auto-cropped as people change their screen size, so you’ve got to think about that too.
Marcus: Well, you can think about it, but there’s not a lot you can do about that, though, really.
Sam: No, but you can kind of make sure there isn’t something really obvious off to the side that might disappear or be, you know, be half in it on some screens or something.
Marcus:Yeah, that’s very, very true. Let’s start with the classic one, which is the website banner, which I tend to think of as being like a billboard shape. First of all, when I shoot like this, I think it’s handy to do two things: either it could be for a very specific campaign and they’re going to have words and text over it, you’re going to ask the company for an overlay, and this used to be like, in the old days, was an acetate that you put over your Polaroid. These days, yeah, these days it’s similar, but it’s just like maybe a PDF that you can put into your computer, and if you’re shooting on Capture One or Lightroom, you can add the overlay to it, and you can actually see how it’s going to be.
Sam: You can see where the text is going to go, so you can see, I need this bit to be nice but dull on the interest to be here where there isn’t text sort of thing.
Marcus: Exactly, Sam, exactly. And this campaign that I mentioned earlier, the creative director was very keen for me to have the hero of the image— the hero being the main part of it— over to the right-hand side because they were going to have an overlay of the company’s logo and some branding going on the left-hand side. So, you know, so I was able to do that without having an overlay. I knew it. I sort of looked at a website and worked out where it was going to be. And then, what you can also then do is when you’re shooting live is maybe put some crop marks on your viewfinder, which some— a lot of cameras have these, they tend to be like the rule of thirds. Those come up, but— and you can sort of use those to help guide it. But it does take practice, Sam, and it’s something that I’ve been working on, these cinematic images, for a few years now, and think because, you know, I think there’s quite a future in these. You know, I love the shape, that cinematic shape. In fact, just as a bit of an aside, when I did my degree show all those years ago, I actually had— I shot square six by six images on my Hasselblad, but I put the three images together and made them cinematic. So, I think, you know, it’s something that’s always been in the back of my mind as an interesting format. So yeah, I have worked on that, and I think our viewers should too. You should practice taking images and understanding how what you see is not what you’re going to be using, and know where to have the cropping within the images. Yeah, so that’s the web banners, as it were. Moving on to Facebook, for example, they’ve got different sizes, haven’t they? They’ve got that really skinny banner, like LinkedIn has at the top, which is very, very difficult to shoot.
Sam: Within your profile or within your business profile.You’re talking about now?
Marcus: Yeah, yeah, those are really very difficult. Very wide and very, very thin. So, you know, you have to really be aware when you’re shooting. You should ask your customer, ‘Where are these images going to be used? Where do you want them? Do you want them for banners? Do you want them for reels? What do you want them for?’ Because that’s going to really inform you on how to shoot it and I think separate you from other photographers as well. If you say you specialize in shooting for specific formats.
Sam: The customer is going to love you if you’re delivering images they can just pop right into Instagram and it looks good, rather than giving them images that get auto-cropped and end up all over the place. If you provide a folder of Instagram images, a folder of Facebook images, and the Facebook banner they want, all formatted for them, they’re going to love you for that. That’s great added value.
Marcus: Well, that’s what I do. I do that, and I enjoy doing that as well. It also gives me more control over my images, so I know they’re going to be cropped correctly because, believe me, Sam, I am obsessed with composition and cropping. Millimeters make a difference, they really do.
Sam: Yeah, because otherwise, someone could use one of your images and say, ‘I’ve got Marcus’s images on my Facebook banner,’ and when you look, there’s your sky.
Marcus: Yes, exactly, or worse, maybe. So, practice it. If you’re tethering, you can use an overlay to get it exactly right. You can get that from your client or start just using your viewfinder or really thinking about it. When Instagram first came out, Sam, it used to be square, and I loved that because, being a Hasselblad shooter, I loved shooting square. It’s a real shame that these days the square format has gone out of favor.
Sam: So has that changed on Instagram? What’s the standard now?
Marcus: Well, now it’s reels, Sam. Because of TikTok, it’s all about reels. That’s the way it’s going, and I’ve heard rumors that LinkedIn is going to give preference to posts with reel-type images.
Sam; So, on Instagram, instead of just posting individual images, having a video that might be a series of images or something like that is becoming the norm.
Marcus: Well, yeah, sorry, I’m putting— I mean, I’m talking more about the crop factor. It’s 16 by 9, but in portrait mode, which is very difficult to shoot with a camera. You really need to practice it and think about what you’re doing and be prepared for it. I have a bit about what you’ve just been talking about at the end of the show, Sam, about reels and stuff. A couple more points to help you maximize your quality and give inspiration: when I do a cinematic format crop, I always shoot in the largest file size my camera offers. My camera has small, medium, and large settings, and I shoot in large because I know I’m going to be cropping nearly two-thirds. You need a good file size for that. And where do you draw your inspiration from? Guess where? The cinema. I look at widescreen and cinema, like Netflix, which has great examples of really wide views and using that framing effectively. Cinematographers are used to this; it’s their job. They don’t have to worry about shooting in portrait mode; it’s all landscape mode. So, as we get to the end, let me just see how we’re doing for time here. Excellent. So, that’s cropping. Those are my views on cropping. You should practice it, ask your client what they need, and use it as a unique selling point. Another thing to set you apart from other photographers is that video has become very popular. Photography can still compete by making movies out of single images.
Sam: Like a slideshow type of thing?
Marcus: Like a glorified slideshow on steroids. There are lots of ways to do this. Canva is very easy to use and great for creating reels where you can put different images together. You can add text, music, and more. Music with still photography is a killer combination.
Sam: CapCut is a popular app for that as well, and it’s free.
Marcus: CapCut? I’ve not heard of that one.
Sam: Yeah, it’s very good.
Marcus: GIFs are also great. You can make GIFs out of single images, which can be very effective for the right client. I’ve done it for quite a few of my clients, and they love them. It’s a great tool for branding and portrait photography. Finally, I use iMovie and other software to create slideshows and movies with a Ken Burns effect. It’s overused, but it still looks good. It’s a technique of zooming in and out of a photograph to make a movie.
Sam: Yeah, it gives more life to the images.
Marcus: Exactly. Photography still has so much life in it and is a great way to convey a message. Different techniques can help get that message across.
Sam: Definitely. That’s loads of cool information, Marcus. Ideas that can help provide more value for clients and differentiate your services from others.
Marcus: Exactly, and you get control of it. It’s also really good fun. At first, it’s a bit of a learning curve, but I really enjoy making reels. It’s a design element I really enjoy.
Sam: Cool. Excellent, thank you, Marcus. I’m going to mention our Facebook group. We have a ‘Shoot to the Top’ Facebook group. If you go to the website, you can find the Facebook group, or just search for ‘Shoot to the Top’ under groups on Facebook. There it will be, with lots of photographers and guests. Most of our guests are on there, we’re on there, lots of photographers, and lots of chat. A really interesting group to be in, so go and join the Facebook group.
Marcus: Well said, Sam, thank you.
Sam: Right, Marcus, I will look forward to seeing you next week when we will be chatting with another one of our amazing guests.
Marcus: Yeah, indeed. See you next week, Sam, and may I say, just keep cropping.
Sam: See you, Marcus.
Marcus: Bye-bye.
