Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge – Cropping the Shot

Thanks to Patti for this week’s challenge. You can view Patti’s very informative post HERE.

For non-photographers amongst the many millions of HX Blog followers (!!!), cropping in the context of photography means slicing off a section off the original photo. There are two main reasons for cropping:

1. To remove some distraction from the edge of a photo – such as half a car or half a dog!
2. To improve the composition of the shot – ie. to make the shot more pleasing to the eye. Google ‘Photo Rule of Thirds’ for some info in that regard.

Take this original shot for example. From a photo ‘composition’ point of view, it’s very poor. The two subjects a centre pic, there’s too much sand, and the photo is a ‘nothing photo’ in reality.

Now give it a little thought on how it could be improved.

Move the subjects to left of photo, so they are ‘walking into’ the photo (another compositional photo rule) which looks better to the eye. And get rid of some of the sand. It’s not needed. MB’s very quick cropping effort then ends up as the below photo, which is altogether more pleasing to view.

It’s a safe bet to say that almost every shot you see in any magazine, or in any professional media, is cropped to some degree.

Happy cropping!

MB