Shark Three Ways ...

[jeremypayne]

Which aspect ratio do you prefer?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

#3… with less water, more emphasis goes to the shark.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

#3… with less water, more emphasis goes to the shark.

Ditto.

[wolfnowl]

Well, I'd prefer not to have the left tip of the coral cut off, but of these, #3 for reasons already mentioned.

Mike.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

To me #1 is best, since there is not so much foreground distracting from the shark.
Actually the amount of water is not more there if I see it right, just less foreground.
In the thumbnail the shark also is bigger, so I'm not sure if Slobodans argument is really valid.
To me the aspect ratio of #1 also emphasizes more the width and less the height of the image and such appears more to stress the "wide ocean" environment and focuses more on the area in front of the shark (possible prey?) than the area below it.

[francois]

I'm with Mike. #3 is best but it would be even better with an uncut coral - context aware fill might help you.

[popnfresh]

I think it's a mistake to label this as a picture of a shark. It's a slightly out of focus picture of a coral reef that happens to have a tiny shark silhouette in the distant background. The shark doesn't contribute very much to the scene, much less make itself the subject, imo.

[jeremypayne]

but it would be even better with an uncut coral - context aware fill might help you.

I don't have CS5 ... is anyone willing to use this shot to show how that would work? 

I have a lot of u/w images with less than stellar composition that could benefit from that kind of "adjustment".

[jeremypayne]

I think it's a mistake to label this as a picture of a shark. It's a slightly out of focus picture of a coral reef that happens to have a tiny shark silhouette in the distant background. The shark doesn't contribute very much to the scene, much less make itself the subject, imo.

Thanks for taking the time to let me know that you disagree with the Subject of my forum posting! 

For the record, I'd say the shark was approximately 6-8 feet long and close enough to get my heart racing.  Everyone who sees the image remarks on the shark, not the reef.

[popnfresh]

Thanks for taking the time to let me know that you disagree with the Subject of my forum posting! 

For the record, I'd say the shark was approximately 6-8 feet long and close enough to get my heart racing.  Everyone who sees the image remarks on the shark, not the reef.

Jeremy, I'm sure the shark did get your heart racing. It would have scared the bejeezus out of me too. And I also understand why people would remark on the shark. It's the most interesting thing in the shot. From the standpoint of composition, however, the shark is only incidental to the scene, in my opinion.

[francois]

I quickly used context aware fill on image #3. I had to do it in two steps to avoid duplicating the coral. I think that in this case you can just fill the left side with the cloning stamp and other methods available in CS4 and older versions of Photoshop.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

Strange - my context aware fill gave a completely different result ..... must have been bad parameters ....

[francois]

Christoph ,
I'm not surprised, context aware fill sometimes produces very unsuspected effects…