Horse grazing, comparing crops

[IABoomer]

I set out the other day to take a picture for one of the games here and this was my first take on it.



I'd posted it on another forum (not necessarily a photography one, but one with some close online friends) and someone suggested a different crop. So, just to see what it might end up like, I cropped it to this.



I kind of like how the fencing better frames the horse in the second one, but it seems kind of bland, where the first one has a greater sense of scale and openness, IMHO. Which crop do you like more, and is there another way of cropping this that I maybe haven't explored? The top one is pretty much SOOC if you want to tinker with it and post suggestions here.

[sk66]

Of the two I would say the first...
But my real feeling is "neither". To me the fence is too distracting..partially because of it's relative brightness. I get that you were probably going for "natural framing" but it doesn't work for me in this case.

[sk66]

I gave it a quick go and this is about all I could come up with...
I still don't think it works too well...Might be because the fence "frame" is "unbalanced" in the image.

[SnapShotShooter]

Originally Posted by sk66

Of the two I would say the first...
But my real feeling is "neither". To me the fence is too distracting..partially because of it's relative brightness. I get that you were probably going for "natural framing" but it doesn't work for me in this case.

I agree -- the problem is not the cropping the image, but the framing of the shot.