If you need to chop off portions of the human body while cropping a photograph, where should you draw the line? The folks over at Digital Camera World have released this helpful graphic with suggestions on appropriate and inappropriate areas to crop at:

Portrait photography is challenging for a whole host of reasons. Getting your portrait right in-camera is only half the battle. Knowing how to edit your portraits can be quite difficult when it comes to cropping a photo. Cropping in an awkward position on your subject can end up ruining a perfectly good shot. [...] we’ve put together this easy guide for understanding some of the best places to crop a subject in a portrait, and some of the places where you should not. ‘Yes’ areas are marked in green, while ‘bad’ locations are marked in red.

This new infographic is nearly identical to one we shared two years ago, except it’s larger and clearer, and therefore more print friendly. You can download the full-resolution version of the image here.

Free portrait photography cropping guide [Digital Camera World]

Thanks for sending in the tip, Sam!

MI5 might have missed a golden opportunity to prevent the 7 July 2005 London bombings back in 2004 when they cropped a photograph of two of the terrorists badly before sending it to the FBI. The photograph was of two of the bombers — Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammad Sidique Khan — and was shot by an undercover agent at a motorway service station. For some reason, MI5 decided to desaturate the photo, crop Khan (the ringleader) out, and make Tanweer look hardly human with blurry facial features and a blob-like profile.
Read more…