Happy Sunday! This week, Ritva is leading Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #385 with topic of “Unusual Cropping.”

I agree with Ritva, cropping is frequently underutilized when it comes to photography. I rarely crop my photos when I photograph with my DSLR because with a zoom lens, I can usually crop my photos while composing my photos. However, when I started photographing with my phone, where the zoom capability is nearly non-existent, cropping became a necessary tool. These days, when I photograph with my phone, cropping is a necessity for just about every photo.

When I traveled to Taiwan and Japan in 2025, I photographed mostly with my phone because most of the time, I didn’t have the time to grab the DSLR from my backpack. Photography isn’t the easiest thing to do when traveling with my mom, who seems to frown upon my photography hobby. She would often tell me on the trip to put the camera away as it makes me look like a tourist, even though I was a tourist.

In Taipei, I tried to be creative when photographing my meals. I’ve never had Taiwanese cuisine before and I probably still haven’t as Taiwan is full of foods from various corners of the world. You can be walking down the street and find a cafe selling Vietnamese-style coffee in a shop and the next shop would be selling Malaysian cuisine. When I put this photo into Lightroom and selected “level”, it tilted the photo, making the fish look horizontal. It’s not my usual style to have my photos tilted like this but be creative, right?

I do not know what my fascination is with the painted arrows and crosswalks but seeing those, I knew I want a picture. However, with the wide-angle lens on my phone, I’m capturing more than I wanted. For both photos, I ended up cropping out about a quarter of the photos. I wanted to make the little man on a bicycle and the white arrow my subjects. I’m glad my phone has enough resolution for me to crop the photos and not result in blurry images.

Finally, I’d like to present this trio of photos. I’ve only recently discovered the usefulness of the square 1:1 crop. The first time I had used this crop, it felt a little strange for me because, for some reason, it’s been burned into my brain that a photo must be a rectangle and a square photo felt a bit…strange?

It’s not my go-to crop as I often feel the crop makes the photo feel a little claustrophobic and being someone who photograph mainly landscapes, I like my photos to feel open. I have to admit when it’s applied to the right photo, the photo can look rather attractive.