Which Photo Did I Shoot?

Post-processing — and cropping, in particular — is one of the most discussed topics in photography. The often heated discussions involve ‘purists’ — who claim that a photo should not be altered but for miminal exposure, highlights and other similar tweaking — and ‘artists’ whose tenet is that only the final result matters.

In principle, I think that both sides have a point. A photo taken by a journalist should reflect ‘reality’, so it should not be composed and/or edited to tell a different story. By contrast, a photo whose goal is to tell a story should not be subject to such constraints and the photographer should not be blamed also for significant alterations.

For example, consider the photo featured in this post, that is the original, unprocessed version, taken in the late afternoon in Piazza San Giustino, in Chieti, a city whose origins, according to the tradition, date back to before Rome was settled.

Moderate post-processing adjusted the overall exposure and contrast, giving the photo better composition while respecting the initial camera angle.

However, the result is unsatisfactory due to the cathedral’s perspective and the man’s asymmetrical relationship with the central window. So I decided to adjust the vertical orientation and crop the photo like this.

As much as the result is better, there is still room for improvement, as the next photo shows.

The further crop evens out the asymmetry between the windows and the man, leading to a definitely more balanced composition, at the price of losing the initial contrast between the majesty of the cathedral’s wall and the small human figure. However, this effect can be taken back by making drastic changes to the composition, such as switching to portrait orientation and cropping the image accordingly.

That said, here comes the question: which photo did I shoot?