It’s been quite a while since my last post, work pressures have mounted as well as things at home but today I took a day and went through shots of the past year to re-crop some for the cropping exercise.
I confess I picked shots that had cropping potential, but I think for the exercise that’s something that can be forgiven.
The first picture I felt had potential, I just wish the white van wasn’t there! The picture was taken in Gloucester at the docks area that has been through a regeneration. It has shopping, homes and businesses all mixed together. There is a lot of texture in the wood and the ironwork, though the open foreground adds very little; the canopy to the left either.
The first thing I decided was to take out the colour – the main features are quite muted and the overcast day didn’t lend itself to attractive saturation anyway. If I’ve have gone in close to the carriage on the day it might be different…
As you can see, in B&W the image already has more impact. Actually, looking as I post I quite like the composition again!
However, this is the latest crop:
From a balance perspective, this one is ‘right-heavy’ because of the goods carriage. However, the shed to the left and the left of centre weighted building in the background does counter-balance to point. In terms of depth and ‘that’ building, I sort-of wished I’d used my DSLR for the picture because then I could have used an aperture that would have softened it a little to create separation from the background. After consideration though, I do like the fact that the name of building can read easily.
When it cam to trimming down the image I tried cropping out the van but then I lost the buffer of the carriage which I wasn’t happy about. Taking out the foreground helped, as did some of the sky and the dead area on the the left.
What I like about the final crop is the isolation of the carriage which is emphasised by the rail’s leading back to the museum, especially with the weeds poking out from the tracks. Given a time machine I’d go back and shunt my viewpoint over to the left. You live and learn! I still like this shot though, despite the flaws.
The next two pictures are from the horizontal/vertical exercise that I did on a visit to Ludlow. I chose the first one after looking at a number of shots and playing around. This one interested me context perspective.
The original, to the left, is very much about the architecture. The neat little courtyard is just off the market square next to the castle, accessed through an arch between buildings.
There are a range of building styles and plenty of textures, plants and activity.
The original is very much about the building and the courtyard itself, but I found the crop focuses much more people and social aspect. It all-of-a-sudden looks busier and conveys some different stories – the business men, the waitress, tourists etc. From a balance perspective the cropped version is more aligned; the balcony, brolly and plants balancing the two umbrellas to the left.
The second shot from Ludlow is one of the market. The landscape format picture has large areas of pavement and the bustle of the market is very lost and really only forms some background detail.
Taken with a full frame DSLR, a wide aperture was used to get wide depth of field along with hyper-focal distance used for focusing.
With the crop turning the picture into a portrait format, the loss of the pavement brings the produce very much into prominence and the bustle of market is much more obvious.
From a balance perspective there’s a general bottom-left to top-right drift, with the shoppers counter-balancing back to the left again, forming a question-mark type shape. Overall the outcome of the crop is a far better picture. It has much more interest, better flow into the scene no dead areas that don’t little to the scene.
It would have been better earlier in the day when the produce was put out and fully stocked, but there was no way I could have made that with the travel. That said this is about the business of markets than the colour or the produce. Though that does look good of course!
The final image I chose for this exercise just screams ‘crop me’! As you can see from the original to the right, there is a lot of dead space. After the last shot and the comment about the pavement you may think I’m against space and was to fill every part of an image with something of interest – it just isn’t the case. Space may help emphasise particular areas or specific elements of a composition. In this case, I feel it’s detrimental to the picture.
This particular capture was taken in the north east near Bamburgh Castle – one of the (it is said) photographed scenes in the UK. It was very close to dusk so I had to use a wide aperture and bump the ISO quite high. The lens in use has image stabilisation but even with panning a moving subject like this one still required a fast-ish shutter speed. In addition I wanted to try an freeze the water a little for some impact.
Once cropped (at the top, bottom and little from the right) the picture takes on a different dynamic. The narrower aspect instantly makes the jet bike look like it’s going much faster. With the empty and blurred water removed from the foreground, greater prominence is placed on the imposing Bamburgh Castle in the background, as well as the sand-flats and the birds feeding.
From a technical perspective the shot was a little under-exposed, by about 2/3 of a stop, so I had to lift it in post. With the dusk lighting, high ISO and the under exposure, the grain was also more than I would have liked. Using the noise removal in Lightroom helped but when taken to a level I liked the resulting smearing of face detail on the subjects made me take it back to more of a comprise between sharpness and noise. All-in-all though, much more interesting.