This lesson is more of a reminder than anything else. I'll be talking about some of the different things you might need to keep in mind when taking a photograph concerning what you plan on doing with the final image.
Whenever possible, it is important to know what you plan on doing with the image when all is said and done. Is it going to be a framed portrait? Used in an online ad or in a magazine? Used for business cards or flyers? etc. I usually like to pull back from a shot just a little to give myself a bit of crop room if I want to reframe an image in photoshop. This isn't always enough however.
The reason for this is because most cameras are going to shoot in a 4:3 mode or close to it. This will give you a fairly rectangular image. The thing to keep in mind is that most framed portraits are 8x10 or 11x14 and will end up slightly more squared than your image. (This is why you may have seen frame sizes at 8x12 and 11x17, though they are still not as popular). Not only that, but also magazines are similarly squared down some usually to 8.5x11.
In the above image you can see a rough example of what I can expect to lose if I wanted to make this image into an 8x10 or similar size. It can be killer on larger family photos as well. If you are not careful you could lose people from both sides of a horizontal shot of a large group. And when shooting for something like that (classes, events, etc) shooting for the "typical" enlargement size is usually a safe bet. Most are going to ask for an 8x10 before an 8x12.
But there is more to keep in mind than just frame/standard crop sizes. If you are shooting for a magazine, is it going to be a page spread? You would have to keep in mind where the page break would be.
Or if it is a cover image or advertisement, you will have to leave room for the title and whatever wording or graphics might surround the focus of the image.
And one last mention would follow similar lines to the magazine concern... Keep in mind what your client might be using them for. I shoot a lot of professional dancers and aside from just wanting nice pictures to display on their websites and flyers, they also will need to create flyers and graphics down the road. For this reason, I always try to give them an image that offers up some space to do something with if they need to create an advertisement, flyer, etc. I also try to use plain white or black backgrounds to make it easy for them to expand on their own if needed.
And occasionally you may be creating something for a unique use. Like a banner that is much more wide than tall or vice versa. Knowing where the dead space in your image is going to be before you take it can save you a lot of headache.
Hopefully this will help you a little bit in the future. The most common issue I see is the first. Sometimes you never realized it when you were taking your film in for someone else to print, I know when I worked at a photolab we only had to have this discussion with someone when the crop would cut someone off badly. Otherwise, you just handed your negative and said make me an 8x10. Now that more and more is digital people are printing their own images and realizing their "negative" size is not always equal to what their final product is going to be.
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