Outdoor Photography How To

Cropping is a controversial topic when it comes to landscape photography but it's also a misunderstood one. Whether to crop or not to crop during post-shoot editing for landscape photos is really a matter of preference but there are a few mistakes you want to avoid.

In the below tutorial, landscape pro Mark Denney shares what he says is the biggest cropping mistake beginners make when editing their landscape images.

"Some folks believe that cropping should never be done, and that the composition should always be perfected in camera, and for those that can do that, kudos to you, but that's just not me," Denney says. "I apply a crop to just about every single photo I edit, and I personally believe the crop tool is one of the best ways you can improve your photography when it's used appropriately."

In the below video Denney shows you the four main reasons photographers use the crop tool on their landscape photos along with "the big cropping mistake that impacts many beginners getting started."

In the video, Denney explains the main reasons to crop at the 0:47-minute mark and the major cropping mistake some beginner photographers make at the 4:41-minute mark of the clip.

"As far as the big mistake is concerned, this mistake is not something that people do or that I did," he says. "It's really something that you don't do. It's something that you might not think about. I know I never really thought about it until I started to pay more attention to the orientation of the photograph."