How would you crop this?

[mdm]

Given that this one is all over the place and leads the eye out of the frame, how would you crop it?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0vkjuCccVcE/UNz1JI25oYI/AAAAAAAABuk/fsANM4pDXkA/s1600/sticks.jpg

[Ari]

Like this...
Got rid of the slightly-OOF branches, and tidied up the other sides.
You could erase or crop out the stick in the lower right corner if it still is bothersome.

[Jody_S]

86114

[Gem Singer]

This is a drastic crop. Would have used a different lens and composed the image on the GG this way.

[Vaughn]

No, but I'd make it a vertical. Rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise.

[mdm]

Yes tightening up to 5x6 helps and strangely so does tipping it up on its side. Sometimes I just point the camera blindly and leave the composition up to chance to see what happens.

86116 86117

[Leigh]

I would vote for Jody's square crop.

This is just a photo of chaos, and chaos has no inherent orientation.

- Leigh

[Fred L]

Mine is almost identical to Ari's crop but just a wee bit tighter on the sides.

86122

[Jon Shiu]

I think the original uncropped version is the best. Maybe just do a little edge burning. It has a naturalness and wholeness to it.

Jon

86123

[mdm]

Chaos interests me hugely because there is no chaos. Thats what chaos theory does, and other statistical fields, it puts order into chaos. Also chaos avoids cliche which is the great friend of composition. If you want to see cliche look for the most refined composition or a poor imitation. I have no interest in that. I want my pictures to have chaos AND coherence. So as a result I have no fear of chaos, the coherence is the hard part.

[Leigh]

Don't get me started on statistics (the methodology that lens uniformity to the art of lying).

- Leigh

[C. D. Keth]

My preference was for a quite drastic crop of the original. Truth be told, it's just not the sort of thing I would take in the first place but here it goes:

[C. D. Keth]

Mine is almost identical to Ari's crop but just a wee bit tighter on the sides.

I made a point not to look at anybody else's choice until after I made my decision and it seems that you were similar but tighter than Ari and I am similar but tighter than you.

[mdm]

Thanks for the ideas, its nice to see how you all see it. I wont be printing this one but maybe I should try again sometime, its only about 100 steps from the door. Or maybe I should, to see what it looks like.

[Ginette]

Hello,

I will remove the branches at the bottom.
Image is a little rotated (-1.5) and crop in a 2x3 proportion.

[mdm]

That might be the best yet, thanks.

[Brian Ellis]

What interested you about the scene, ie what caused you to make the photograph? That will dictate the cropping, if any.

[RichardSperry]

I would crop it like this...

[welly]

I would crop it like this...

Like it a lot.

[Bill_1856]

File 13

[Light Guru]

Like it a lot.

I agree splendid crop.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Ginette's is the best. Next time try using a viewing card to suss out the composition.

[mdm]

When I went out that day I was tired, hot and stressed, the wind was blowing again and all I needed was to relax. So I spent 30 minutes looking at dents in corrugated iron and pointed my camera at those hedge trimmings too. Anything that does not move in the wind. The dents were surprisingly interesting, the detail in the sticks is satisfying. I achieved what I wanted by escaping for 30 minutes. Next time I might try a viewing card, but one thing I know, when you try to make good pictures they seldom are. When you have fun making pictures though, it all works automatically. Sometimes you just need to go through the motions with no expectations, if it happens it happens.

[sun of sand]

didnt mean to leave the large border
did my crop before seeing any others

I don't like that bigger stick. everyone kept it. looks blunt and chewed.
I like jodys crop with the bottom edge sticks but I cant get a pattern with my crop

i like the circlular nest-like shape
I'd try dodging that outer ring out from under the sticks to create a full circle but not glaringly obvious ..also the 95510 connected teardrop formation on the bottom of it
you can see a bird like head in the sticks


more graphic of a print
stronger without stick from top right corner

[mdm]

Looks pretty strong to me, well done.

[Steve M Hostetter]

didnt mean to leave the large border
did my crop before seeing any others

I don't like that bigger stick. everyone kept it. looks blunt and chewed.
I like jodys crop with the bottom edge sticks but I cant get a pattern with my crop

i like the circlular nest-like shape
I'd try dodging that outer ring out from under the sticks to create a full circle but not glaringly obvious ..also the 95510 connected teardrop formation on the bottom of it
you can see a bird like head in the sticks


more graphic of a print
stronger without stick from top right corner

well done, at least in this instance cropping makes all the difference

[SergeiR]

IMHO - there is no improving it without killing "chaos". And as it is - its badly missing few strong compositional things to make it interesting , so no amount of cropping or fidgeting with d&b will sort it out and thus falling into "oh well" tossing pile for me (i got that special pile that getting cleaned out every few weeks).

Eye must travel.

[Curt]

Like this...
Got rid of the slightly-OOF branches, and tidied up the other sides.
You could erase or crop out the stick in the lower right corner if it still is bothersome.

That's my first impression too!

[Brian Ellis]

It's hard to say without knowing what the photographer was trying to achieve, which isn't obvious to me from the photograph. But if it was the idea of chaos then I'd leave it as is but burn down some of the bright white branches, especially the long one in the upper right. Not so much that they blend in perfectly with the rest of the image but enough so that they aren't the first thing one's eyes go to. The fact that one's eyes are supposedly led out of the image doesn't bother me at all.

[Otto Seaman]

Chaos interests me hugely because there is no chaos. Thats what chaos theory does, and other statistical fields, it puts order into chaos. Also chaos avoids cliche which is the great friend of composition. If you want to see cliche look for the most refined composition or a poor imitation. I have no interest in that. I want my pictures to have chaos AND coherence. So as a result I have no fear of chaos, the coherence is the hard part.

Sounds like you are trying to ascribe a deeper meaning to the image after the fact, like coming up with a sufficiently wordy and pretentious art reason to justify a random, boring photograph.


When I went out that day I was tired, hot and stressed, the wind was blowing again and all I needed was to relax. So I spent 30 minutes looking at dents in corrugated iron and pointed my camera at those hedge trimmings too. Anything that does not move in the wind. The dents were surprisingly interesting, the detail in the sticks is satisfying. I achieved what I wanted by escaping for 30 minutes. Next time I might try a viewing card, but one thing I know, when you try to make good pictures they seldom are. When you have fun making pictures though, it all works automatically. Sometimes you just need to go through the motions with no expectations, if it happens it happens.

Like drugs?

Maybe you want to keep it for personal reasons but dithering whether to crop it a certain way is rather pointless, nobody else really cares about some random sticks and a haphazard large-format shot. People are just BS-ing about the crop because they'd regret wasting the film in the first place.