How best to crop?

[Matthew_Scullion]

This is just a quick snap I took earlier, trying out lighting in different ways. I was originally playing about trying to balance an anglepoise lamp as a key light with my strobe as a fill, but I liked this shot with just the table lamp.

It's pretty much straight from camera, with a little bit of post-prod in NX2.

How would you crop it?

Thanks in advance.

[kstiltne]

I would definitely get rid of the bright, distracting light on the right, cropping just inside of it, then tighten it up on the left.

[LeeR]

In most cases when you take a photograph of a person you want to leave a bit of extra room in the direction they are looking; it just looks "right" when you do it that way. But this is not a 'normal' image; at least the expression is not 'normal.' For that reason, I felt like it was entirely appropriate to do the opposite and crop the direction of sight a bit close. It works...in an unbalanced way.

[sketching]

I like having the monitor in the image. It looks like you are turning your back on a source of frustration. I only cropped in slightly to remove a bit of blank background.

I darkened the monitor so that it would not fight so much for attention.

[LoveDSLR]

Here's my version:

[Matthew_Scullion]

Thanks for your advice. I guess one thing this tells me is that there is no RIGHT way to crop a shot!

I like all 3 suggested crops... I did want the monitor in shot, so I guess with this in mind I prefer the examples given by Sketching and LoveDSLR.. but then again, I always love a photo with just me in it (!) so I also like LeeR's suggestion.

Many thanks for your input guys.

[tchudson]

The crop without the monitor makes me curious about what is outside of the photo that is capturing such intent attention.