Too much context, too little boy?

[Surprised]

Deserted Scottish beach, sunny afternoon, dark clouds overhead -- it was a good day for taking photos of our boys. Happily I've put away several snaps I'm quite pleased with, but did I miss an open goal with this one? It's the composition I'm worried about... below is the SOOC version; would a crop help or is it OK as it is? All comments as ever gratefully received.




EXIF data
Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ28
Exposure: 0.0025 sec (1/400)
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 38.5 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Taken at 3:30pm BST

[NicolaB]

Hello

Beginner so not much to imput technically - but for what it is worth, did you get a close up of your son and his reflection in your series of shots?

If not, do you think a portrait crop of this one would work with your boy bottom third right? I know you would loose the beautiful Scottish scenery - unless you went long and tall but that may loose emphasis on the reflection which personally I think is a lovely artistic touch?

[MrJones]

while the scenery is nice, my eye keeps going to your son's hands, trying to figure out what he is doing there (building castles in the sand i guess).
I think a thighter crop, leaving him on the right side of the photo would be better for me, but that's just me

[BigFuzzy]

The thing that bugs me is the position you were in. To me it's the standard "I'm standing here with camera at eye level" position which, to me, could be greatly improved. Nothing better than getting down to a childs level. I have no problem with showing that much context... just the angle at which it's shown.

I always ask myself when shooting, "how can I change the angle from which I'm shooting to make it more interesting"... because everyone else, ever, has done and can do this angle.

My .02

[Surprised]

Thank you for your comments.

Nicola B: do you know, I'd never even noticed J's reflection! How pathetic! But I guess that's one reason why I put things here -- often other people will see things that I haven't... So many thanks for your comment; much appreciated.

MrJones: yep, he's building sandcastles. He spent what seemed like hours there, sometimes using a spade but more often using his hands -- there's now a lot of sand in our car.

NicolaB/Mr Jones: to accommodate your comments I've tried a little crop. Because the reflection is not obvious, a really tight crop that included the reflection didn't seem right: J's position in the picture was very high and threw it out of balance. Hence I've swapped to portrait...

This also meant I could keep some "beautiful Scottish scenery" too.

BigFuzzy: Thanks for your post; I completely agree. Normally I do try and get down to their level; on this occasion I think the zoom I was using made me forget -- the angle wasn't so obvious. J has his own camera -- a cheap adult point-and-shoot -- but he takes some really interesting pictures with it; what strikes me is how often his pictures (especially his portraits) look up, and seem odd because they do so -- and that reminds me how odd my looking-down pictures must seem to him!

But thank you once again for your comments. They've really helped me!

[LeeR]

I do not think this is a case of "too much context, too little boy", as a matter of fact, I suspect you could have included a bit more context and you would have been fine. However, I agree with Big Fuzzy that lowering the angle of the camera closer to the boy's level would have helped as would moving him from the bottom left to the bottom right. Generally speaking, we want empty space in front of our subjects. There are exceptions, but this isn't one of them. You have too many compositional elements calling for him to be in the bottom right.

[Life in Motion]

sorry just wandering what it would have looked like with him looking the other way to lend to a compositionally more correct image so you could keep more of the landscape like you were wanting. lol just a quick edit to see if it would have made that much difference ...ignore the terrible cloning job lol . hmm...i don't know if it made that big of difference...interesting experiment though...

[Surprised]

Lee: thank you as ever for your words of wisdom on this one. If I recall correctly, there were one or two other people in the foreground more or less directly in front of J, and I didn't want them to feature in the shot -- which is why he's ended up bottom left rather than bottom right. If I had a better photographer's instinct I would have recognised the need for a bottom-right location just before I took the picture, rather than a couple of weeks afterwards! Still, I guess a photographer's instinct is something that can be improved with experience, and I'm grateful for your tutelage in helping me along that road.

Of course the alternative would have been to holler out to the lad and to get him to face the other way -- but that might have spoiled the candid nature of the shot!

Or, one could do that in post-production; thank you very much, Life in Motion, for the time and trouble you've taken to do just that. Your picture is undoubtedly compositionally better -- I think it does make a difference (it just feels more right!), so thank you again for your efforts.