Cee’s next tips are on “Cropping“.  It is the first thing with which I started to play around when changing to digital photography even though at the time I had a relatively crappy camera. On my first printed album pages – the equivalent of the sophisticated photobooks one can now put together online – I played around with a variety of formats and I’ve learned to be more conservative in sticking to traditional formats, particularly when the photos are displayed close to each other.

We were having a lot of fun in this playground for adults (it’s a tree top trail).

But the focus in this shot should be on the people (I have others that show off the trail).  Switching to portrait does just that.

A bit further along we found a slide.

Again I cropped the photo to cut out ‘noise’ and changed it from landscape to portrait but I also angled the shot a bit to give it more impact.  Being closer also shows off the awkward position of the body since this slide was not adult-size.

In the same area there is a woodcarver who has gone slightly mad – his sometimes bizarre sculptures are everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE.

I cropped the little bloke tightly and got rid of the leaves overhead (there weren’t enough in this frame to look like anything but some weird speckles).

Then I decided to try for a square foto.  I concentrated on the head and moved it more to the centre (in the second shot he was positioned more to the right).  Of course, the weird sitting position (don’t even think about what this little guy is doing!) is being lost but it shows off the smile crumpling his face as well as the cracked wood.  I keep changing my mind which photo I like better depending on what I find more important.

Here is another threesome. I spotted this arrangement in a closed up window last weekend.  Of course, the window is already a square frame and the plaster wall to both sides adds nothing to the composition.

I could have cropped even closer leaving only the black wood to frame the arrangement but I preferred the slightly loser crop.

Or, alternatively, I got very close ignoring the dwarf daffodils and moss and the second (rather ugly plastic) pot and concentrated on the two chicken.  By switching to a square format I could lose the wooden item to the right of the smaller chicken.

 

Let’s stay with birds for the rest of the pictures. It’s obvious there is too much dead space surrounding the head of this goose.

I could have cropped to a portrait showing off the long neck. But there wasn’t all that much neck in the original photo so I decided on a 1:1 format keeping the orange rimmed eye almost centre.

Different location, similar bird.  The goose is not positioned properly and the little heap to the left doesn’t really add anything to the mood of the photo.

So I went very close, once again focussing on the eye.

Last goose of the post.  This little guy rushed off just when I took the picture.  As a result he is too far to the left.  Cropping close to the gosling didn’t work very well because of his downy fluff being slightly blurred.

However, I think I rescued a passable photo by concentrating closely on his foot.

 

CEE’S COMPOSE YOURSELF PHOTO CHALLENGE: #15 Cropping Tips