should i crop?

[jcarp]

I took this picture of a grate and was wondering if the blown out sky is distracting. I was thinking about cropping it, but i really like the detail of the brick on the right. What should I do.

Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 18
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off

[Murtasma]

Nice texture on the wall, I also like the cool blue tones in the image. I think cropping will damage the image and create to much tension if cropped in that close. You will also lose the nice texture in the wall. Sometimes you just have to deal with blown out skys like this. This may have been a good image to try HDR with. You may be able to overlay a blue filter with the opacity slider way down to add a little color to the white to see how that works out. Just mask off the other areas of the images so everything doesn't turn blue.

Personally I don't think it hurts the image that much.

[stitchbug]

i agree with murtasma.
i dont think the blown out sky hurts this image, rather, it adds to it, IMO.
the contrast between it and the darks looks great. i really like this shot.

[candleman]

its not the blown out sky.. its the sharp edge between the sky and the bush. thats what the problem is.
if you could soften that a bit then it would be a bit better. overall its nice. i like the processing.

[dda53]

Personally I would crop out as much of the bush and the sky that I could, if I couldn't make some color or exposure adjustments to those areas post production. I don't think those areas add much to the shot in their present form, and they do have a slight detrimental effect on the over all pic, as they stand now.