Good image composition is important from the moment you first view your potential masterpiece through your camera lens. Once you have the image on film, you can then be even more creative in the darkroom.

   Working with the 35 mm format, you will soon realize that when the negative image is projected onto the easel, the image will not fit perfectly onto the 8x10 or 11x14 format of photographic paper - as the 35 mm format does not have the same ratio of width to height as does an 8x10 or 11x14 piece of photographic paper.

   This can be rectified with a combination of two techniques - "previsualization" when the image is first viewed in the camera lens, and later cropping in the darkroom.

   When composing the image in your viewfinder, that you wish to later transfer to a piece of photographic paper in the darkroom, you must learn to allow some extra space around your main subject. This technique is called "previsualization", in other words while composing the image with the camera, you must mentally visualize the final 8x10 or 11x14 image, realizing that what you are seeing through the view finder will not completely fit when transferred to photographic paper. In the darkroom when you crop the image to fit the paper, you will lose part of the image. If you happen to fill the viewfinder with your main subject, then when cropped in the darkroom, you may be distraught to see that you do not have a printable image with a pleasing aesthetic composition.

Cropping is achieved by raising or lowering the enlarger head and moving the easel in order to frame exactly the part of the image which you wish to print. The first time that you project a negative image from your enlarger onto an easel set at either 8x10, 11x14 or 16x20 this will become a little more obvious.