What’s Your Preference?

Maple · #1 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 04:24 PM

New member here! I've recently moved from photography as a hobby to being paid for some of my shoots, and it comes with a whole new (good) kind of stress. I've been concentrating on engagement and family photos so far and want to improve the creativity of the photos and poses. For the last few days I've been surfing the site and can't wait to keep learning from the experts here!

This is one of the photos from last weekend. I took it with the intent of also showing their shoes, but during the editing process decided I wasn't feeing his ugly sneakers

and cropped them out. I was experimenting with the cropping, trying to keep their hands out of the exact middle of the shot, to increase the interest, but ended up with this crop - exactly what I was trying to avoid. Every other crop just looked like crotch shots. Is the crop pleasing to the eye? It's not exactly following the rule of thirds...

Also - I'm trying to avoid becomi

knixpix · #2 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 04:33 PM

I like it, it shows an intimacy without being over the top.

SusanH1970 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 04:52 PM

Breaking the rule of thirds is fine when done right. I actually rather like this...the only thing that bugs me is the logo on the white sweatshirt; it's fighting for attention with their clasped hands. I might crop that out to get rid of it, and it'll bring the hands up so they're not quite dead center, which I think might be a little more pleasing to the eye. I held a piece of paper up to my monitor blocking out the top portion of the photo, right under the logo, and I thought it looked better.

Just my 2 cents.

MrJones · #4 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 05:04 PM

I can see where you wanted to go but I just doesn't do it for me.
the shoes aren't the issue, it's actually the lack of symmetry between the couple. I'm talking about the half cut leg on the right. it just doesn't feel right.
now that I think about it, why no get out of the box and crop in horizontally? you've already lost the shoes and the pants aren't that interesting to take half a photo

I mean something like that:

Niresangwa · #5 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrJones

I can see where you wanted to go but I just doesn't do it for me.
the shoes aren't the issue, it's actually the lack of symmetry between the couple. I'm talking about the half cut leg on the right. it just doesn't feel right.
now that I think about it, why no get out of the box and crop in horizontally? you've already lost the shoes and the pants aren't that interesting to take half a photo

I mean something like that:

+1 to this. I do a lot of work with obscure crops and unusual composition and framing; sometimes its easy to get 'it' on the first try, other times, you have to go through a dozen different crops to get 'it'.

The 'it' I'm referring to here, and is crucial to the image is striking a balance between conveying an emotive response and also trying to bring interest to the photograph by removing elements the viewer expects to see. If you miss it, its just a crap image, if you get it right, its a really powerful shot.

As this usually involves portraying an intangible, you have to make sure that's the only thing that can be taken from the image, with no distractions whatsoever. MrJones crop manages that...

..i would remove that mark on his jeans and also that little loop on the hem of his jacket. Again, because there's nothing striking about the image, you have no leeway whatsoever in how well the hands hold the attention, so even the smallest things drag away the eyes of the viewer.

As simple as these kinds of shots may seem to be to the casual viewer, they actually take more time to get right because their impact is much more fragile without the traditional anchors such as the subjects eyes...

Maple · #6 (**permalink**) 11-02-2010, 05:31 PM

Wow! I like it! I had tried to crop horizontally but was leaving blank space on either side of their body, and of course it didn't look right. This looks much better.