Cropping question?

[kevin99989]

There are two images here. The first one is the "bigger picture", and the second one is the cropped image

What do you think of the cropping? How would you have cropped it differently? Better question - how to improve the composition?

As always, other comments welcome as well!

[Kawarthabob]

For me there is just too much space in this picture(s). you wanty to tell a story when you take a photo. I would try and crop this tighter. Did you use a tripod? shutter release? if a sillouttte was what you were going for , you would want a more crisp ouitline as possible set against the colours of the water.

[kevin99989]

I wanted to convey a sense of warmth and solitude at the same time. I didn't have a tripod at time; so i brought the ISO up to around 650 and shot with my lens at 200mm (highest possible zoom for my lens); shutter at 1/160 sec; f5.6 (i think).

[JAS_Photo]

Personally I like the first photo. I would just straighten your horizon which I believe is off by just a fraction and crop the bottom, only enough so that your horizon hits at about the one third mark which is not much maybe 10% or so. I like the first photo because your two kayakers are already in a good position in the photo. (the slight bottom crop would make them more so) They are leaving a trail behind them which your eye follows to lead you into the photo, then you continue to look across the photo into the space they will be moving into. Then you see the three poles which form a diagonal and serve as a leading line line. Your eye then goes up along the ridge of hills that form a pleasing pyramidal shape. Overall, this is a really nice photo. I like the minimalist colour scheme and strong contrasting colours.

[thoughton]

I think the cropped version is a little too tight, especially at the top. I think the height of the sky should be at least as much as the height of the hills (it's such a nice sky!). I agree about cropping the water though. Overall I think I'd keep most of your original image, and just crop about 10% off the bottom and 10% off the left (including both of those poles).

[Marko]

Cropping is personal and personally I like shot 1, the uncropped version much better than the cropped version in this case.

That said, I'm a big 'player' with cropping as well - and I like thoughton's suggestion of cropping the water; personally I might crop 50-60% of the water off the bottom to see what it would give me. My guess is that it might work well as the foreground becomes more interesting with that crop.

Wonderful colour and silhouettes here, this scene would have attracted my eye as well had i been there.