Composition

[Hill Country Hack]

Here is a photo I took last summer when I was just beginning to get out of the auto modes. I have played with multiple crops. The original shot was much wider to include more water in the foreground and more above the dam to include a boring concrete bridge. I settled on this crop as the sky was somewhat blown and the bridge just had to go.

My main questions are:
1. Was the DOF to blur the falls and the slower shutter speed provide enough seperation?

2. Is this crop better than including the entire height of the grass? I was torn on either seeing the entire height of the tall grass in the left portion of the island or keep it as posted. If I included the entire length of the grass then the bad sky and boring bridge is brought back into play.

This was orignally shot in jpeg...I know, I know. I don't have the EXIF (I'm just asking about composition so not a real big issue?), but I can tell you I used my kit lens at a relatively wide apeture and shot it on a tripod. I have tweeked the exposure and other things as I was able in LR3.

[RichardTaylor]

(1) I don't feel there is enough separation.

(2) The white pipe(?) across the top is a major distraction so more cropping (off the top and a little off the bottom - to remove the path) would help.
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[Hill Country Hack]

Originally Posted by RichardTaylor

(1) I don't feel there is enough separation.

(2) The white pipe(?) across the top is a major distraction so more cropping (off the top and a little off the bottom - to remove the path) would help.
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Thanks Richard. I'll give it a go and repost. The white pipe is actually the sun reflecting off the water spilling over the dam and the "trail" is also water.

[Krusty79]

Good shot. I think you could use a little more separation, but that doesn't bother me. The thing that really bugs me has been mentioned by Richard, that horizontal line near the top. I can't get past that.

[milosh]

Agree with everything already said!

I realized that I'm looking at falls only when I read so. The line is distracting, maybe your best bet is to clone it to make it less noticeable (you can use the water just beneath the line as the cloning sample).

[shruggy63]

It strikes me that the subject of this photo is within a range of colours? You've got the yellow flowers against their green bushes. Yellow + blue = green. Once you've cropped out the white pipe could you pump up the blue in the waterfall?
Then if you made a B/W copy you could combine the images at about 80% in favour of the colour pic? Just a thought...

[Hill Country Hack]

Thanks to all who commented. Taking all of the input under consideration I came up with these two differing crops. Which one works better?

This is the first one in question with the bright water edge on the falls gone as well as the bit of water in the FG lower right.


This one is tighter

[Barry Jackson]

I feel like the center of interest is the flowers in the foreground.

I feel like I am leaving the subject to try and take in the waterfall behind.

I notice at the bottom you said it is okay to edit your picture.

I hope you don't mind if I went far out in a approach.

I severely cropped the image.
Then I inverted it.
I then applied a polar coordinates filter.
I transformed the rectangle to a square and cropped.

I apologize if I went too far.

[Krusty79]

I like the first one better because the waterfall is still an important part of the image.

I also like Barry's version, but I can't see the larger version.

[crockny]

I prefer your second version -- I don't think the waterfall adds anything -- the subject seems to be the flowers at this point ...