It’s Not About the F-Stop

Frame Within a Frame

I have always liked the idea of framing things.

I never talk about composition. The only time you have a right to talk about composing things is if you have a hand in rearranging the elements in the picture. Or, as Ernst Haas called it, window dressing.

When you don’t have this control, when you are working from life itself, the only thing you can do is frame the shot or crop the shot the way you want it.

“Wait a minute!” my class yells at me. “You said we can’t crop our images.”

“Yes, I did, and you cannot, but I was referring to postproduction. You must crop and frame your images in the shooting, not later.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t shoot carefully, you start getting sloppy in your thinking and seeing. You’ll find yourself ...