Pixiq

Christmas family portraits and wedding books are a great time to try out this useful technique that will make even a casual snapshot look classic.

Simply put, a circular or oval crop physically eliminates uninteresting corners and draws the eye toward the face and expression. It’s gentle and gracious, sometimes bespeaking a femininity, but not weakness.

"Here's a classic but emotion filled wedding portrait. The bride is wearing a period fairy-tale gown, complete with wedding watch and jewelry traditional to the time. The original image is certainly fine by itself, but watch what happens with alternative cropping."

"Note the different effect of dark and light cropping; the dark mat makes image project towards you, while the white mat is like a window frame through which you are looking at a subject. The faces are now much more the center of attention. This is why black albums with black mats were the overwhelming favorite for several decades, and are still popular in spite of the many textures and colors now available. Yes, the bride was really tiny!"

I for one began to use shapes differently in 2000 with vignettes, irregular fades and my favorite onOne software borders. All photography is about stories, especially weddings, and my opinion is that visual storytelling is fusion of many devices, styles and image size - all chosen to mesh with the flavor, ebb and flow of the life event at hand.

"These days I generally take a more contemporary approach, which is also very romantic, and make my circles with vignettes. Lots of white space looks great in wedding books."

I think early photographers of the 1800’s hit upon the oval cropping because of several things. Often the edges of hand-coating on sensitive plates were irregular and scratchy. The image edges were also often out of focus, were just plain empty of details or had anomalous flare - also unattractive. Miniature oil paintings, ceramics or cameo carvings were traditionally made to fit tiny oval lockets, broaches or traveling frames favored by the well to do. Arch-top mats and oval wall frames with domed glass were understandably popular.

In wedding albums a raised oval frame for a small print on the cover led the way to innovative design with shapes. This was in the late 60’s and 70’s; the non-rectangle mat, however, was really just coming into its own in the 70’s. Not many years later there was an explosion of mat shapes and dozens of multiple opening mats offered by then industry leader Art Leather. And thankfully circles and squares were offered due to the ascendency of Hassleblad 2 1/4 square format.

When things went digital it’s as though everybody forgot about cropping images with shapes in wedding books. Have you noticed how almost all wedding book templates are rectangles? Are we afraid to to use circles, ovals and other shapes, because we feel they’re lacking today’s hard, edgy style, extremely tight cropping or that using shapes looks too much like scrapbookers’ craft? All of these reasons have some validity, but probably just hold you back from being really creative and creating a niche market.

"Here are two examples of how circle vignettes can be used effectively in wedding album layouts that are visually eye catching and very different from the usual templates."

"Using shapes could be an innovative feature in your albums that would set your work apart. Particularly apart from typical album templates that are also available to do it yourselfers with mass-market photo sites. One more way you can start going pro in the new year."

What’s old is new; what’s different is good!