Is Photography a Crop Shoot?

First crop and b&w conversion.

Finally, the composition I settled on, giving the image an entirely different flavor.

When I shoot, particularly on location I want to make sure I capture everything I can from the location without requiring a return to meet the current goal.
I usually have a shooting plan and final image or images in mind. That may mean capturing dozens for a stitching in a panorama, covering the full range of exposure levels that may be combined in an HDR merge and enabling sufficient image for cropping.
I usually do not see my final image with the same proportions as the camera captures -- this was true of film and is true today of digital. In my mind each subject should have its own proportional framing, whether rectangular, oval, round, or some other shape.
It is purely arbitrary to let the fixed framing of the camera determine for you the shape of the final image. I think that is the province of the artist/photographer. That compels some degree of cropping.
I will have a vision of that crop when I trip the shutter, but I always try to ensure that I capture enough image to change my mind later.

Thanks for the response, John. The original image above was exposed back in the mid 70's. A couple of years later, in a photo class, I printed it in b&w as originally composed. I even framed it. Over the years I've always looked at the photo wondering how it would look if I had focused more on the boat and dock rather than the peripheral contents, which to me grew more and more distracting. I often find myself taking time to compose, maybe too much, to try and get the framing right the first time. This shot was with film. It seems with the advent of digital and the increase in resolution that brings with it, the original composition is less important than it was. Certainly basics would still apply but I'm beginning to think about changing my approach to capturing the moment, focusing more on exposure and depth of field over framing with limiting image borders.

FWIW, One of the all time greats of photography, Alfred Stieglitz used small format cameras for a time. According to William Crawford in The Keepers of Light, 1979:106

Because the hand camera produced a small
negative, Stieglitz made enlarged negatives for
contact-printing or enlarged positive transparencies
from which photogravure plates were produced.
He rarely composed his hand-camera pictures
using the entire negative; the final image was
almost always cropped. [emphasis added, JDM] The enlarging procedure
caused a certain loss of sharpness and of tonal
separation.ln later years, as he became more concerned
with retaining the subtleties in his
negatives, whether made by the view or by the
hand camera, Stieglitz printed only by contact
from original negatives.

Hi Bill,

That's pretty typical of me, leaving just a little bit of "fudge factor" to the image so I can perform some creative cropping if I want to. Heck, I even cropped an image in half one time, creating two individual photos that stood independent of each other. I have 16mp available to me, and I shoot in raw, so I'm able to do just what you did above, catch one image then decide later that only certain aspects of that original is what you want to show in your final image, with enough room to hopefully crop it right.

In regard to cropping, a couple months ago I was at a talk given by a pro and he was asked about the topic of cropping. He is not bashful about cropping at all. He said plainly- "they're my images, and I'll crop them any way I want to [in an effort to make the best possible final image]." I mean, in the end, who is going to know, other than you, that you cropped an original image like you did above? If all you showed us was the final image without the discussion of cropping, I would have never known it came from a much larger scene other than maybe some minor cropping to create the slightly panoramic view of the scene.

I like your final image a lot- simple and elegant, to the point. No ambiguity as to what the subject matter is supposed to be. And I know that something is in the background because the far shoreline is subtly alluded to (without distracting detail) in the reflections off the water. And that reflection is in harmony with the main lines of the boat and the dock- the reflective edge of the treeline runs parallel to the boat and to the dock. The minor details of the ripples in the water create perpendicular lines that also are parallel to the minor detail lines of the seats in the boat and the boards on the dock. I see harmony in the details of the final image. I really do like that final version better than your original. The original shows a pleasant, relaxing snapshot scene but it's packed with lots of individual details, there doesn't seem to be a strong, singular subject like the last image shows. Lastly, I'm glad you went with the modest sepia monotone, removing the coloring of that old image which I don't think adds anything to the original photo. Well done.

Bill, I like what you arrived at in the one you settled on. For me, it's more intimate and feels quite a bit more internal.

I tend to work in a variety of ways. Sometimes I frame and don't crop and will just get a nice sense of having what I want at the time. Often I do crop. Sometimes I know I am probably going to crop because, as John suggests, I just want to be sure to get more than I need so I can decide later what I want to do with what I've got. Sometimes, I think I have what I want as framed and when I get home I realize I've got a much better picture if I do crop.

I guess what I'm getting it is that I work different ways and try to be flexible about it. I get a very unique sense of satisfaction from framing just what I want with the camera and not cropping later. It's like there's a harmony right there in the moment. I get a different kind of feeling but an equally rewarding sense of satisfaction when I surprise myself as Bill did above with a good crop of a larger image that creates a strong photo. And when I include more than I need I get an equal sense of satisfaction knowing that I have started what will be a process toward the photo I want to achieve.

I tend to crop in camera whenever possible. That comes from decades of using slide film. This means I make a lot of variants if there is time unless there isn't, or I am confident I've got it. I am not above cropping in PP if I have to, but I never "shoot loose" with cropping in mind later.

JDM,
After reading your insert it would appear I'm marching in the opposite direction. I suppose as we get older the logical path would be to follow Steiglitz. Not being a master of lighting I'm becoming more prone to focus (work) more on that aspect of an image than to relagate myself to getting the composition right the first time. After all, without the proper exposure, good composition is irrelevant.
Steve,
I have taken presentable images cropped with nothing more than the viewfinder, as we all have. I have been the proverbial blind squirrel in that regard, lucky at times. But I agree with you and, as I stated, I am gravitating toward a looser style of capturing an image than what I have done over the years. Hopefully, it will produce more photographic inventory from which to extract more succint images. Thank you, by the way, for your kind synopsis of my example above. Very much. It's appreciated.