i joined flickr recently, and have been reminded of how seldom people like to crop their photographs. for the most part, images are rendered in the shape of a long and narrow rectangle, the traditional aspect ratio of 35mm photographic film and 4x6" proofs that's been ported to digital camera technology and, subsequently, to the screen.
don't get me wrong: i don't have any particular qualms about this—they're not my photographs, after all. however, i do think it's worth considering what a photograph is (that is, what it's author intends it should do) in order to suggest that full-framing is in fact counterproductive almost all the time.
first, although cameras are by definition machines, they are also tools used by human beings. to say, for example, that you'll let a camera take my picture is absurd: you will always take a picture, and do so with a camera. put this way (a little exaggerated, i know), cameras are tools that humans use subjectively and selectively. in other words, people choose moments from among others to render onto film or memory card, and they make selective decisions about what, particularly, they want to focus on during such experiences. during a concert, for example, one could choose to take photographs prior to the event, though one might typically prefer to wait until the performers are on stage; likewise, one might prefer to photograph the audience's reactions to the performance, though most often one would focus solely on the actions happening on stage. decision-making, in short, is not automatic, and it is crucial to capturing images. it stands to reason that it would or should also be involved in subsequent renderings of captured imagery, transformations and transmogrifications of such raw material into more refined print and digital forms.
secondly, and somewhat paradoxically, although elements are often carefully arranged within a photographic frame, considerations of that frame (e.g. its angle, its dimensions, or its orientation) are addressed inconsistently: that is, seldom of it with the same degree of attention as to what goes in it. nevertheless, tacit manipulations are apparent, such as when photographs suggest a photographer is aware of horizon lines or the vertical lines of buildings, trees, or other freestanding structures. considerations of framing can even be said to be more persistently ignored in certain standard or "clichéed" framings, as when images are constructed using wide-angled lenses, where boundary areas are "filled in" with distorted, yet still inconsequential, detail, or where low apertures are used to render nearby elements in selective focus while the background goes fuzzy. regardless of either of these or of other techniques, there is little reason why the frame itself should be subordinated or wholly ignored while other compositional traits are given more consideration.
thirdly, photography is an inescapably expressive activity. claims to the passive, neutral rendering of natural or found landscapes, forms, subjects, or events (that is, as if a photographer is only ever representing what she "found") are false and frankly immodest. no truth is there to be discovered; only social, authorial, cultural, organizational, institutional, economic, political, gendered, ethnic, or other values are embedded there. and even this, even these values, are in place both within a frame and in the context within which a photograph might be found. in a word, photographs are only ever rhetorical: each asserts a position, one which may or may not demand their viewers to do the same. (that is, without necessarily seeming like propaganda.) for a photographer to ignore the dimension of framing on her expressive imaging capacities (whether passively or actively), is to assert any number of beliefs which she may not, in fact, personally espouse (e.g. that cleaving to photographic standards is the only logical way of doing photography; that amateurs should only ever aspire to aesthetic mediocrity, with poor framing skills being one way of doing so; that shooting full frame imparts an air of unquestionability, of visual authenticity, rather than smacking of ethnocentrist and even solipsistic egotism and self-aggrandizement; and so on). more importantly, to discount framing as a core component of such expressive symbolic communication is to deny one's role as a co-creator of our contemporary world and to take up one's place as a cog in an already well-functioning machine.
in short, unless you want to take up the compositional challenge posed by the somewhat tricky 2:3 aspect ratio of this format (as few have done, notably excepting Henri Cartier-Bresson), or unless the frame is itself an integral part of your subject matter (as in the case of David Hockney's assemblages of 4x6" photomat proofs), it might be fruitful to think more carefully about who you intend such images to speak to, and what might be said by them in turn.
