Cropping Choices

There are a million ways to crop a photograph. If there weren't, photography probably wouldn't be much of an art form. When I take photos, I will often crop the image in several ways, both vertical and horizontal, and by zooming in and focusing on a particular area. I take the opportunity to highlight certain objects in the scene, to move them from one corner to another, and see what works. This is my one chance to capture this scene in this light.

Because I'm using my phone, I rarely zoom in. This would just artificially crop the image, leaving me with less information to work with later. I can crop all I want with Photoshop or Instagram, but I can't zoom out there. Photographers used to "bracket" their images, using more light and less light, to be sure they captured the scene correctly. That is not so much of a worry now, but multiple images lets you avoid problems like blur, selective focus, moving people, or shadows.

Here is an example of one scene cropped in two different ways. I used the lower one as the source image for the painting above. Recently, looking at both of these images, I'm more drawn to the wider angle. The fuchsia red of the roses adds a lot to the scene, complementing the green, the way the orange complements the blue. Maybe I need to paint this one, too!