Dena and Nate were married Saturday at Park West Church of God in Knoxville, but this wasn't your typical church wedding. Although some guests may have missed the fact that the flower girl threw lucky pennies instead of rose petals as she was carried down the aisle, I don't think that anyone will forget the bride's entrance. Dena started down the aisle with traditional music, but the song suddenly changed to an unexpected rock song by one of the couple's favorite bands.

The quirkiness continued with their choice of music for the first dance, and it was obvious that these two were making the day their own by injecting their own personalities into the wedding.





With an afternoon ceremony and reception inside the church, we had plans to do couple photos outdoors after the reception. Some ominous clouds threatened to disrupt our plans, but it quickly dried up after only a brief shower. We shot a bit around a park near the church and then headed out to a field that I had driven by on the way to the church. As some of you may know, I've been wanting to shoot a bride with some hay all year long, and I finally had the bride and the hay to make it work.

One problem that I run into over and over again is a misunderstanding of print crop ratios. Last year, I tried to explain this confusing issue in a blog post, and today I want to offer an example. For illustration, I'm using a photo of the lovely Jessica that I just happen to be working on.

All of the files from my camera and, therefore, the photos in the galleries are in a 4x6 ratio. This is obviously a rectangle, but many of the American print sizes are much more square. For example, an 8x10" print is a 4x5 ratio. When someone orders an 8x10 from the gallery, I must crop off part of the image in order to make it fit that size. This doesn't always present a problem, but sometimes it can. In the example below, the first photo is the original 4x6 ratio.



This second photo is a 4x5 ratio. Compared to the image above, you can see that I have had to crop off most of the bouquet, but this is what must be done to make it fit onto an 8x10 print.



What if you wanted to keep the bouquet in the shot? Well, you have a few choices.

First you could just order a print size that stays in the 4x6 ratio such as an 8x12 or 16x24. These irregular sizes would require custom framing OR a less expensive option is to have a custom mat cut. For instance you could use the 8x12 with a mat to fit a 11x14 frame.

The easiest option is to do a digital mat. I can keep the entire image and have a black or white border printed around it so that it will fit on a standard size print. For the example below, I used a black border to make the image fit on an 8x10 piece of paper.



The digital border works well with normal photos. However, if you are ordering a canvas and don't want to lose any of the image then you would want to order a size in the 4x6 ratio. Canvases don't need framing anyway so it isn't a big deal to have an irregular size.

If I get an order for a print that will be affected by a crop, then I will sometimes send an email and ask if the customer prefers to have the photo cropped or to have the border added. Most people prefer the border. In my professional judgment, if the photo is going to be ruined by the crop and result in the loss of important elements such as people or body parts then I will just go ahead and add the border. Although many photos like the one above wouldn't warrant an automatic email or border, they just don't look as good cropped. Just keep this in mind when deciding what size prints to order.