Paddler, Bunyoni Lake, Uganda
Fujifilm X-H2, 150-600mm lens @ 600mm, 1/500 second @ f8, ISO 1000

How do you frame your subject? There are some obvious answers for many subjects, but is the 'obvious' the only solution?

One of my favourite photographers Irving Penn was a master of the unusual crop. He would often create a tension in the photo by his positioning of the subject within the frame, or the subject's proximity to the edge of the frame. Generally we're taught to place our subject so their position within the frame 'makes sense', but Penn challenged this idea. Successfully!

For instance, if you have a man paddling a canoe from left to right, you'd place the canoe on the left of the frame, leaving room for the paddler and the canoe to move into the frame. The position indicates the movement of the subject. This makes sense and is still good, general advice.

However, making sense isn't the only approach. We only have to read the many opinions on social media to know how differently people think, so it is very probably that our 'makes sense' framing doesn't make sense to some of our viewers anyway! So, if we can't control how all our viewers react (and we can't), do we need to control them at all? Or can we look at options?

In the photograph above, the paddler is sitting in a long five metre canoe. Most of the canoe has been cropped. Instead of showing where the paddler is going, the photograph indicates where the paddler has been. There's plenty of negative space behind him, pushing him along. It's not a 'makes sense' crop, but perhaps it's an interesting crop? Did you look at the image and think, 'Oh, this is cropped incorrectly', or did you think, 'Oh, this is cropped differently'?

Perhaps cropping your images is one way we can attract attention - being fully aware that not everyone will see it your way. But does that matter?