You certainly baited the thread with your comment, "Here come the croppers." If this photo had been posted by anyone else without the "croppers" comment - yes, you would have received a slough (slew?) of critiques suggesting cropping. But you are Russ, and everyone who reads & posts regularly knows you're attitude about cropping, and, with your photography, you have demonstrated a level of ability that would preclude many from taking issue with this photo. I can hear them now, "yup, this needs cropping, but, hey, it's Russ. He knows what he's doing."
Well, thank goodness someone had the fortitude to stand up to you - thank you Jim Pascoe and a +1 to you, too, Slobodan and Jeremy.
Yes, the photo "needs" cropping to fall within the "rules" of "good" composition. And, yes, there are times to break those "rules". In fact, purposely breaking those rules, like you've done, sets up a purposeful tension, a dissonance that creates a kind of dialogue with the viewer, with the viewer thinking, "Gee, this really should be cropped. But the photographer didn't. Either he really knows what he's doing or he's a rank beginner who desperately needs some lessons in composition." and the photographer simply replying with the photo "as is".
So, this begs the question, are rank beginners who don't know how to compose simply skipping the seemingly unnecessary learning and getting right to the free-thinking "art" of it? Or, should more experienced photographers stop hiding behind their flaunting of the "rules" and realize that sometimes photos need cropping? Or should we be free to do what ever the heck we want with no room for criticism because we are free to do what we want and that's our "style"? Or...
Besides, when camera formats were decided all those years ago, who knew the world doesn't always appear in a nice, neat 3:2 (or 1:1 or 4:3 or 4:5 or 1.6235:1) ratio?
Personally, I'd crop this to 1:1 cropping (yup, I said it) from the left side as suggested. But, it's not my photo, it's Russ's.
(Edited for spelling and adding Jeremy to the list of croppers.)
Thanks, Terry. I see you edited it for spelling, but you need to do some more editing. You did something that jars me every time I see it. The phrase "begs the question" refers to a question that contains an unsupported assertion. To say something like, "It begs the question, 'why didn't he?'" simply isn't correct English. The textbook example of begging the question is the sentence, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" That sentence begs the question big time.
But aside from that aside, which many people would call trivial but shouldn't, I'm happy with your fortitude. You're doing the kind of critique I look for on LuLa but almost never find.
But you, Mal, Jim and Slobodan are wrong. Eric, Jeremy, Mike, William, Seamus, and Francois are right. (Sorry about the water droplets, Chris. I probably could Photoshop in some more contrasty ones.)(And, Mal, I prefer "Great Blue Ascending" too, but I didn't think it was a contest.)
I explained why I shot this picture with the bird in the center of the frame. Since I was trying to avoid the double-wide trailers off to the right it was pure (lucky) chance that I shot it this way. I had intended to crop it. But looking at the result, I realized that bird has to be exactly where he is: right in the center of the frame. You can screw around with crops all you want, but I suspect you'll come to the same conclusion once you see the result.
As far as the "rules" of "good" composition are concerned, this IS one of those times you mention when they need to be broken. And there always are two kinds of rank beginners. I saw that for ten years in my wife's gallery as people would bring in artwork they wanted to sell or put on consignment. One kind of rank beginner is trying hard to learn the "rules of good composition." The other kind won't even try. The winner is the guy who occupies a space between the other two. He's learning the craft, but not just by memorizing rules. He's learning by studying the work of the masters, and one of the things he learns from the masters is that when you think the rules ought to be broken, that's the time to break them and then decide whether or not you were right. If you were wrong you dump the result. If you were right, well, that's called "art."
