Exercise 12, P.50: 24/02/12
Although the subject is cropping I will have to call upon some techniques already learnt in the course to carry out this exercise. When looking through my portfolio for suitable photos to crop, I realised that I naturally fill the frame with the intended scene prior to pressing the shutter. This is why it was difficult to find examples of scenes that could be cropped as they were few and far between. The three photos I have chosen show different scenes and different needs for cropping. I’ve had no choice but to use thumbnail sized images for this exercise as I wanted to put the images side by side.
Photo 1:
The photo on the left shows the original frame which includes one whole rose and rose bud with some background foliage. Although the rose is centrally placed there is dead space to the left and part of a rose to the top right which is quite distracting. My initial thought was to crop out everything other than the central rose and rose bud but having tried it didn’t seem quite right although it did fit in with the theory of the golden section. I decided on a much tighter crop to make a feature of the petals. All distracting and unwanted items in the frame have been cropped out resulting in a beautiful close up of a yellow rose.
Photo 2:
In the original first photo Jumping Jack seems lost amongst the background trees. I tried a crop of Jumping Jack himself but being suspended in mid-air the story was lost in cropping out everything else. The final more subtle crop shows just enough of the trampoline at the bottom of the frame for the viewer to know how the subject was caught in mid-air. As a substantial amount of the frame was cropped out Jumping Jack now stands out more. This photo also now leans itself towards the rule of thirds.
Photo 3:
This photo was taken during a girls holiday in Tenby and the subjects are my mother, my sister and my niece. I saw them sitting on the bench together and shouted Cookie (Our family name) so I wasn’t referring to any one of them but all of them looked over as I intended and I quickly got the shot. I love it because it shows three generations of girls in my family and as I caught them unawares they all had natural facial expressions. I know in their minds mom is saying ‘cheeky’, my sister Deborah is saying ‘WHAT!’ and my niece is giggling at my antics. Their faces emulate their personalities which I think makes this photo great. However, technically there are issues with the photograph as it was impromptu. The hands look awkward and mom overpowers the other two subjects. I cropped out most of the bodies and the left side of mom so as to equalise the proportion more and make mom less dominating in the frame. This left just the faces and enough background to know they were sitting watching the sea. I can’t decide if the bottom left green grass is slightly distracting or not. I tried cropping it out but too much of the story was lost and I decided to leave it in. Using the balance scales this photo is well balanced with one bigger subject on one half and two smaller subjects on the other side.
Sam Bennett 