Slide Cropping

by Ginny Santora

The Raritan Photographic Society began its 72nd season on September 14, 2000, with a lecture from our own Joe Napoli. Joe, an excellent slide and print maker in his own right, shared with us his techniques on transforming a poor composition into a good one or making good slides even better. He also told how to salvage what you may think is a totally useless slide. Joe's photographic credentials began when he became a crime scene photographer for the police force, a position which he held for many years. From there, he moved into forensic photography. Since leaving the force, Joe embarked on a new career as a photographer with Motorola where he continues to be employed today.

We have all made mistakes at one time or another, and undoubtedly we will all continue to do so! Cropping is defined as cutting something out of a picture. In-camera cropping is the preferred method of improving composition. Taking that into consideration, economics is the obvious reason to crop your own slides. Let us take the classic example of the otherwise acceptable image with an unwanted, obtrusive telephone pole in the frame. You can deal with this problem in one of three ways: 1.) You can take it to a custom lab and have them take the telephone pole out. This will cost you approximately $18.00 -$20.00. 2.) You can cut your own mat to cover the pole. If you do your own mat cutting, you will first have to invest $80.00 - $100.00 which is the cost of a mat cutter. 3.) You can adjust the image on a computer, but you will need the right equipment to do this properly. Estimating the cost for such an operation should include the cost of the computer, software, printer, scanner, etc. All this runs up the cost considerably. If none of these solutions seem cost effective, it is because they are not! You can, for the cost of 14 cents per slide, do your own cropping. The cost of an Erie slide mount is $14.00 for 100. Sound good? You can get many different size slide mounts for that price. Some come with round corners and some come with square corners. If the price seems right, it is because it is! Contact the Erie Color Slide Club, Inc., P.O. Box 672, Erie, PA 16512 for details.

Sandwiching is the process of putting slides together to produce one image. You can take a throw-away image and drastically improve it by sandwiching it with an interesting background. For example, taking a landscape and sandwiching it with a yellow piece of celluloid can make into a nice sunset image. Joe showed us what he considered a "junk" picture taken at Mystic Seaport. Putting it together with an orange colored slide gained him the Slide of the Year award at the Ocean County Camera Club! Joe also showed what he considered to be a mediocre picture of two horseback riders on the crest of a hill. He took the slide, projected it on some foam that was used as packing for electronic equipment and re-shot the picture. He then sandwiched the shot with a picture of a sunset and came up with an incredible image! The process of sandwiching is simple. Using a razor blade, remove your slides from their cardboard mounts, blowing on them to remove any dust. Put them together, place them in the new mount, making sure not to align them off-center. If you do, the sprocket marks will be visible when the slide is projected. Carefully heat seal all sides around the mount with the tip of an iron. To avoid slippage, provide support by holding down the side opposite to the iron with your thumb. Consult Porter's Catalog for oval masks and round mounts.

Try flipping your picture for a better composition. Because we read from left to right, judges usually prefer to see an image which looks from left to right. And remember, the smaller the mount the tighter the composition. Joe fielded questions from the club as to the type of equipment and film that he uses. Joe uses Minolta cameras and Kodak film. Kodak, feeling the pressure from Fuji, is now a fierce competitor. Joe likes Kodak ES (Extra Saturation) film, but also feels any new slide film you use will do the job. Whatever equipment and film he uses, we know that Joe can get the job done! Many thanks to Joe for starting our new season off with an outstanding presentation!