Cropping

Been receiving a couple of messages regarding sports photography lately.

The questions that pop up invariably revolve around: -

1) What lens did you use?
2) What camera did you use?
3) Do you use the centre Auto Focus point all the time?

Cutting to the chase, yes, technique and equipment are important, but what makes or breaks a sports photo (most of the time anyway) lies in the first and possibly most important step in post-processing: cropping.

Here's an uncropped frame from a 300mm capture: -


And the cropped version:


Whilst some would disagree, it's sports photography - not fine art - there just ain't many excuses for a loosely cropped photograph.