Cropping and extending: Cropping

I chose three of my existing images from previous exercises and the proceeded to look for other photos, within the photos. Below are what I thought made the best choices for each photograph, with explanations for each.

This first crop I chose because it eliminated the portions of the original photograph that were ‘dead’ areas and didn't necessarily add anything to the composition. I focused on getting the curve of the road and boundary trees to become the main subject of the image so that your eye follows the curve up and down the frame, and to emphasise how I wanted the eye to travel I decided to use a vertical frame.

The second crop I took because I loved the look of the clouds and their shadows from this shot, so I wanted to single them out and devote an image just to them. I took the whole top section of the original image and made a long thin panoramic crop to show how broad the sky stretches.

 

Lastly I felt that this photograph of my bedroom lamp looked very static on its own, so I cropped the shot to position the lamp to one side to add more interest. I really like how the light plays through this shot, and now that the balance between the background and lamp is more equal, the tone of the background actually enhances the colours shining through the beads.

Cropping is an extremely useful tool for getting rid of unwanted focal points within a shot, or for putting the emphasis on a certain area of the frame. For every photograph you take, there are a thousand other possibilities of pictures in that shot that can be obtained by cropping. Although you are looking for the best possible composition at the time of shooting, cropping can be used in addition to get the best out of your work, just try not to rely on cropping alone to improve your work.