Icy cliché

[jani]

Hello, I'm back, sort of.

Last Sunday, I went to cover the broken pipe on my fishing cabin. Unfortunately it was not at the time of best light, but I got to try out my new gear.

I have one landscape photo that I am moderately content with, which I'm a bit stuck regarding cropping, and perhaps some post-processing, so I would very much like opinions on that.

As usual (for me, anyway), I do not mind critiques of other aspects of the photo.

In order:

Original frame
Original format crop
4:5 crop







Self-insight spoiler (select the text below if interested, but try to avoid it before commenting):

• Both cropped versions have had some clone tool work done.
• The 2-3 version has a small straw that could probably be cloned away with little detrimental effect.
• The 4x5 version has a straw that looks completely out of place, which is difficult to clone out. Re-cropping does not help the composition much.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

To me the third version (4x5 format) feels the most well-balanced. I like the movement of the ice "track" that curves past the foreground bush and ends near the lower left corner.

Eric

[stamper]

The first nearly does it for me. Unfortunately the branch goes out of the top of the image. If there had been a little bit of sky above then it would have been good. I think you need the branch to balance the image but you have cropped/framed too tightly. 

[jani]

Perhaps it was framed too tightly. I took some other shots with slightly different views, but my sense of aesthetics protested at the mess on the right side. Here is a wider view (uncropped, default LR 1.5 processing):

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Suggestion:
(IMHO You could even crop away the lower row of grass and give it a landscape format)