I figure that the photographers who don't care enough about their pics to crop them well probably also don't care enough about them to complain about their spread around the net. Really old pics taken by anonymous photog are fair game. Some of these are classics and it really wouldn't be a waste of someone's time to recrop them and post them here. I don't think you'd need to delete the thread after a while as I doubt there is enough interest here to use up server space. Anyway, I started a thread once for artistic public nudity pics and the idea was in part for people to post improvements on classic pics. So yeah, I'm interested in this..
FLickr pics on the other hand can usually be traced back to the original photographer, and I would be hesitant to mess with them here. Its that way with a lot of other material traceable to more recent photo albums. Most people probably don't care too much, but enough do to potentially make it an issue. As for me, I take pride in my pics and complained to Coccozella when they recropped them. Some of my pics are floating around the net in half a dozen versions and if I had my way, that would not be the case. Its called "quality control"
So yeah, get permission if you can. If you can't and the original photographer can be traced back to easily, you could make someone upset, especially if the pic is already nicely cropped. We have copyright issues as it is in many cases with Flickr pics even if they are
not recropped, so that is why caution is advised...
But older material or really popular pics that have been reposted ad nauseum could go up, original and recropped. If it were my thread, I'd try to make it instructional i.e. I would say how and why I recropped it the way that I did. We have a lot of posters of original material now at OCC, and something like this where we could all learn more about the "art of the crop" might be well received. Cropping
can be taught, and most amateurs (our primary source material at OCC) are really not very good at it. But I mean, if you are going to spend thousands of dollars taking and posting pics, do you really want to go through life being a "crappy cropper"?
A serious thread devoted to all aspects of improving pic quality, with examples (before and after), etc would be fun and educational..
Klondike
Klondike