This all makes obvious one of the conceits of Cartier Bresson's work. He never cropped an image. Every single photograph is a full 35mm frame just as it came from one of his Leicas.

I spent a fascinating few hours with the book looking at hundreds of images, seeing which ones might (to my eye at least) benefit from cropping. Remarkably few, and therein lies part of Cartier Bresson's genius. Within the confines of the 3:2 aspect ratio of the 35mm frame, and working spontaneously with millisecond timing, Cartier Bresson was able to not only see and capture the decisive moment, but to do so while neither excluding anything vital nor including anything extraneous.

I don't hold up this disciplined (if not indeed rigid) approach to framing as being virtuous. In fact I avoid it in my own work, believing that each image wants to have its own unique aspect ratio, regardless of what some manufacturer 75 years ago decided should be the relative height and width of the frame.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/bresson.shtml

With more time to reflect on the image, some cropping is often better (for us lesser mortals anyway), just as Adams, while a master of exposure (no, not that kind :-)), reworked the tones in printing.

A link back to general concerns in Eurotrib:

An environmentalist, Adams capitalized on his fame to lobby Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter for better conservation policies.

"They felt they were in the presence of someone who wasn't interested in advancing himself, who wasn't interested in getting elected to something -- someone who simply loved America and loved the American wilderness," said Turnage, who accompanied Adams to visit Ford at the White House in 1975.

Adams' motive, behind his political activism and his work, was simply a love of the beauty around him, according to friends.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/07/12/adams.show/index.html