composition/crop question

[refreshinglyblue]

The goal of this particular outing was to get shots of the area and not people (especially in high noon sunlight), but she was looking lovely. As such I sort of got into the rut of horizontal shooting -- did failing to shoot vertically hurt the image? Is there too much negative space -- and is there a way cropping could improve it?

And of course, any other criticisms are welcome.



Canon EOS 5D
1/200 sec.
f/20
50mm
ISO-200
Flash On

[wulf]

The colours are quite appealing - they catch that slightly too vivid yet vintage technicolour vibe. I don't think the horizontal framing is a problem but there are several drawbacks to having your subject so close.

1. She looks a bit blurred and the landscape is definitely out of focus even at f/20. You are struggling against the laws of optics!

2. It looks like you have used flash to compensate for the brightness of the background. A wise idea but the light drop-off is very apparent towards the bottom of the frame. Further away and the light would be more diffuse (even if you had to turn up the flash to a higher power to compensate for the distance).

3. Compositionally, because she is so close to the camera, she doesn't relate to the landscape. Cropping could help here by making the photo all about the lady and relagating the landscape into an unambigous background position (try a square, with her right eye roughly on the centre line) but still doesn't deal with the other issues above.

Wulf

[JFSanders]

I concur with Wulf. I have to say that my first impression of the photograph was that she was inserted into the photograph through photoshop. Jim

[refreshinglyblue]

Thank you sirs, your comments are very much appreciated!

Wulf -- you're exactly right, I was struggling. It seems as though several problems could have been fixed by simply backing away from the subject, something I will keep in mind in the future. I tried the square cropping as you suggested, but it looked quite crammed, certainly a result of shooting too close.

JFSanders -- now that you've mentioned this, I can't unsee it.