When cropping becomes a conceptual problem :( I hate making those decisions...

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When it comes to cropping I'm the worst person ever, because I don't know how much composition I need or want for my photography, and the answer to my question is pretty simple... I know, whatever it fits better to the concept you want to capture, but I'm dumb at taking those decisions. Therefore, if I take a picture with no big concept in it, how do I aesthetically know what's the best crop for it?
Yesterday, I went to a casual photo shoot at a local lake, and I took some pictures of this guy in a raft that was just passing by, the thing is that I loved the color of the water and that effect of the water getting turbulent because of the raft's pass. The thing is that if I want all that to be on my frame, I need to crop it, because I don't have a Telephot, of course this is just an example, and I'm talking about concept not lenses, hahaha.
I liked how the picture was taken, and how the long horizontal picture ended, and that is the concept that I like, even though there's not that great concept in this one, the style of the photo is worth it. But then I cropped it and I had my doubts about how the picture should be, anyway, anyone that can tell me what to do with it would be more than welcomed, how do I leave it?




IMG_2552 copy.jpg




Byron M.

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This is the cropped version. Sorry but I forgot to edit the frame with my tag.




IMG_2552 cropped res.jpg




Byron M.

askme2flashu

There are a lot of "rules" that effect how we choose to crop a picture. Rules of thirds, Eastern v Western perspective, use of dead space, rules of motion. The list goes on and on.

Lets take your man on the raft. The "rules" say to crop a moving object moving into open space. Rule of thirds says to place subject off center in one of the grid points or grid quadrants. By using these two rules you should get a nice standard crop.

By best advise is to get a good book on composition. Learn the "rules", then learn to break them.

I hope this was of some help,

-M-

B://

askme2flashu wrote:

There are a lot of "rules" that effect how we choose to crop a picture. Rules of thirds, Eastern v Western perspective, use of dead space, rules of motion. The list goes on and on.

Lets take your man on the raft. The "rules" say to crop a moving object moving into open space. Rule of thirds says to place subject off center in one of the grid points or grid quadrants. By using these two rules you should get a nice standard crop.

By best advise is to get a good book on composition. Learn the "rules", then learn to break them.

I hope this was of some help,

-M-

THANK YOU very much, I didn't know about that, I think I'm a very experimental photographer, even though certain concepts don't flow into your mind in that empirical way I'm used to.
Do you have a link to somewhere that talks about all this composition rules? I'm pretty interested in that. THANK YOU very much again

Byron M.

Angelo

B:// wrote:

IMG_2552 copy.jpg

This is a perfectly nice picture as is. Why crop it?

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Angelo wrote:

This is a perfectly nice picture as is. Why crop it?

Paranoia Angelo, paranoia. Hahaha, don't know, I guess it was because I thought that the long horizontal frame was missing something, maybe more panorama, or maybe it was because the moving object was not framed properly, but now I'm reading a little bit more about those composition rules they talk about. Thank you for answering and I'm glad you like the uncropped version , see you around, bye.



Byron M.