Cropping

 

This exercise asks for three photos to be edited via cropping.  As I use Lightroom and have done for some time the majority of my editing, including any cropping is via that software.  I find the cropping tool particularly useful and in the process of selecting shots to keep will, along with other considerations, consider any cropping possibilities.

This first shot is a case in point.  Shot at sunrise on Glastonbury Tor it of a young girl waiting the sunrise and the opportunity to spread her father’s ashes.  Having asked permission I took several shots this being one of my choices (with some adjustments to highlights, shadows and exposure) already having the final crop in mind:-

As it has several component parts, the girl; the sunrise; the landscape and the sky it is possible to crop to isolate these:-

My preferred crop was, however, this one which (to me) told the story better than the full frame, by concentrating on the relationship between the girl and the sunrise:-

The next shot, of Stonehenge was taken, by necessity, some distance away from the structure.  As a result there is fairly large expanse of green at the bottom;-

To cater for the lack of range I bracketed the shot but the main change was to cut out out the foreground and edges, albeit slightly in the latter case to arrive at what I consider to be a more dynamic and interesting photo:-

My final shot used in this exercise is from Eastbourne seafront.  This is the original:-

I hadn’t really thought about a final crop for this shot (I just liked the subject) so played around with it when I got home.  One of the advantages of the cameras I use (in particular the full frame) is that the image size allows a judicious amount of cropping with out the image suffering.

I liked the idea of the rail leading the viewer in to the shot so this was one of my possible crops:-

I also considered a more portrait orientated crop:-

Eventually I opted for a letter box shot as I liked both the sweep of the rail and the division between the sea and the promenade.  I went for a monochrome shot as I wanted to make the image not related to any timeframe.

I use cropping as a tool a lot and often shoot with a particular crop in mind (as in the first example above) or with sufficient space and/or distance to enable cropping as in the second and third examples.  That is not to say I do not shoot with a specific composition in mind but having croppable (?) shots as a further option is to me a good idea