Cropping video review

The cropping tutorial video we watched in class really made me look at cropping as a design function. Previously I thought of it as more of a basic tool to touch up photos rather than something designers use to add meaning to an image. There were lots of different kinds of cropping mentioned but the one I found most interesting was cropping to take out a small slice of a much larger image, reducing it to its fundamental meaning. This allows the audience to pay close attention to your focal point, and also is useful in situations where you don't have a lot of space. I also found the tips for cropping photos of people interesting. I just never considered the weight the eye places upon people in an image, and how that adds to the overall balance. People have a lot of psychological weight to the viewer and thus special rules apply for cropping them. For example, it is ill advised to crop out necks, fingers, feet, or through eyes in an image.