When Cropping is Your Friend

One goal of photographers is to be able to capture what is in front of them as they envision/see it in their mind.

This is easier said than done. 

It implies that one takes the time and has the skill to thoroughly think out the myriads of options and choose ONE.

I have to leave that to the professionals.

But there are serendipitous moments when I am lucky enough to photograph something I don't want to change in any way. For me it is just right.  

But what about the other 99% of the photos? We can simply leave the them alone and enjoy the memories. Or we can use a photo processing program to tweak a little magic. 

A week ago I posted When Less is More. This article spoke about eliminating  the unnecessary to create a STRONGER more INTERESTING photo.

I wanted to take one more opportunity to work on a few more photographs. These photos I  have used Photoshop, basically cropping to remove that which is not necessary, to focus the eye on one event.

If you haven't used cropping tools with your photos, I highly recommend it. It brings your main subject up close, you see details you would never know were there. It is very exciting to see the dramatic changes.

These photos were taken in Croatia, a land of great contrast and beauty. It was so enjoyable to revisit those pictures, then choose a few to narrow the perspective on. 

These sweetheart birds you barely noticed in the original photograph. But with stringent editing, you can see the beautiful design in their feathers, and tenderness of the moment.

Until I cropped this picture very tight, I had NO IDEA that there was a dog at the top of the steep stairs!!!!  Now if I had wanted to work harder in editing I could have eliminated the dog. BUT, gosh, he made it all the way up those stairs, so he should have his photo taken!!!

Dubrovnik is a very tightly packed, enclosed town. There isn't much land, especially for hanging laundry or recreation. So the view of laundry out of windows is to be expected, and adds a great deal of interest to the composition. What you don't see, because of the cropping, are the extraneous walls, trash on the ground and unattended "lawn."

Tomorrow, in Kat's class, the subject of close/cropped photography will be closed and we shall move on to something else new and exciting. Looking forward to what Kim has in store for us. 

This is a complimentary class and we share photos on Flickr...would love to have you join us!