Sharecropping: Ben Willmore @ 7-11

We haven’t had a Sharecropping article lately. Sharecropping is our guest image feature segment and we were lucky enough to land the intrepid Ben Willmore for this edition. I had the pleasure of working with Ben at the Adobe Photoshop & You Popup Store in San Francisco a couple of years back and keep track of his many travels on Facebook. The other day, I happened across a photo Ben took of his lovely wife Karen while travelling through one of my favorite haunts: Badlands National Park.

The above image is the photo that caught my eye. Sometimes I feel like I am some sort of cropping savant because I see obscure trivia amide the clamor of an image. Like an image compositional ‘Rainman’, I looked at this picture and said, out loud, mind you, that “Karen is standing at 7-11”. For those of you who regularly read this blog, you may know where I am going with this. 7-11?

I asked Ben for a few details on the capture of this image and he related that he used the iPhone 5’s built-in panorama feature in the supplied camera app. Post-processing was done in Google’s Snapseed. So, Ben had to be pretty conscious of what was going on in this moving capture.

But 7-11? How is Karen standing at 7-11?

I brought the image into CorelDraw and overlaid a grid of 7 high by 11 wide. Look at the horizon. It is on the top-most Rule of Sevenths.  The important part of the backdrop into which Karen has been placed, is the landscape. The sky is incidental to the image and its lack of importance in Ben’s framing choice supports this.

Karen herself is placed on the left-most Rule of Elevenths. We don’t talk much about the Rule of Elevenths at Holy Crop and there is a very good reason. Most images don’t have the horizontal fortitude to withstand a Rule of Elevenths-based composition. I’ve found that once an image reaches a 4:1 aspect ratio or higher, the Elevenths becomes a possibility but not a necessity.

Karen appears intimate with the landscape in this composition. She is a part of it. Not only is she in the landscape, she is capturing the landscape from the inside-it wraps around her, enveloping her in the landscape.  She is a part of the story rather than being the story placed in a pretty backdrop.

Great photographers instinctively know when a composition works regardless of the ‘rules’ involved. They have a knack for knowing when a particular framing technique will likely yield a strong image.  As you explore the world of ultra-panoramic crops, learn to be aware of those little-used and little-understood rules. If you find yourself at 7-11 someday, pick me up a Slurpee™.

Thanks to Ben, and by extension, Karen for participating in Sharecropping at Holy Crop!  Next time you are in town, Ben, the Slurpees are on me!

Rikk Flohr © 2013

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Sharecropping (Of a Sort): Sometimes It Crops By Accident In A Cool Way You Never Intended

While not a true Sharecropping article, it has that sharecropping feel to me. So, here goes!

Ever send an image, meticulously composed and cropped, of course, to a social media site like Facebook? Did you ever have that crop destroyed by the constraints of their web galleries’ thumbnail proportions? Ever have the opposite happen? Have you ever sent a great image to an online gallery and had the thumbnail crop give you a different and sometimes more compelling image? It happens.

I was thumbing through some images on a FB Friend’s profile pictures gallery and noticed this compelling image (4th down on the left) and thought that is a cool composition.  Of all the images shown, its thumbnail representation grabbed me the most. I thought, good ol’ Tom must have cropped this one 4:3 for it to come out that good in thumbnail view. I was wrong.

This is the actual cropping Tom chose when he edited his photo. There is nothing wrong with it. In fact, it is a very nice image. Those killer eyes are placed at the upper right Rule of Thirds in the thumbnail crop and in the portrait original.  But, I think you would agree, the thumbnail and the full image are two different pictures.  Of course the cropist couldn’t resists cropping the larger version for demonstration purposes on this blog.

I’ve tried to approximate the crop of the 4:3 thumbnail in a larger version. It is quite a different picture than the original.  It has fewer distractions in the bright white bar and less zebra print. It isn’t better but it is different. It is also something that might not have been attempted had not Facebook’s Profile Pictures gallery thumbnail cropping shown us the way. Drop us a note and let us know which version you like better.

Special thanks to Tom Frisch for allowing us use of his image. You can find Tom on Facebook here.  He also has a gallery on SmugMug here.

Of course this all got me thinking about something else but that is a topic for another article.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

Follow Rikk on Facebook or his Facebook Business Page

ShareCropping: Jim Strand’s Winter Reflections

Welcome to the May edition of ShareCropping.  After a couple of busy months, the cropist is returning to sharecrop another image.  Today, we are going after Jim Strand’s excellent homage to the departure of winter. Winter is still hanging on in spots in Minnesota and it is hoped that this last sacrifice will lead to Spring!

This is Jim’s uncropped original.  It is a very cool image taken on a 4×3 aspect ratio camera. When I saw this image, I knew it had Sharecropping written all over it so I asked Jim if he would donate it to the cause. He agreed.

Analysis:

After looking the image over, I decided what needed to be done. Here are some of my observations:

1. The image is a little down-hill to the right.
2. The bright sky at the top is too much. It draws the eye away from some amazing detail. (Ripples in the dark water, snow on branches and some nice reflections)
3. There is some lens distortion at the edges that also distracts the eye.
4. The larger trees frame the image nicely and need to be preserved.
5. The darkness at the bottom occupies a little too much space.

Let’s go into the crops!

Crop Rotation: Let’s level it up a bit.

There. That’s better. Well, this is a landscape image so the landscape crop comes immediately to mind. Keeping in mind our analysis, I worked several traditional landscape crops. I found this one to my liking.

I took a little off the bottom top and left sides. I tried to keep the branch on the left side from lifting out of the top of the frame to hold the sky and just enough of the shadows to frame the bottom of the water.  It helps but I think we can do better.  Let’s look at a square crop.

With a square crop, I had to decide which side was more interesting. I chose the right hand side because I liked the foreground shoreline better. This one really highlights the ripples.  I like this crop because it minimizes the sky and takes the image off-center a little.  Now, let’s look at a portrait crop.

For portrait, I decided I liked the other side better. The lone branch jutting into the empty sky gives me a focal point and deals with the loss of the ripples.  The image has become more about negative space in the sky and the water. Of the three, so far, I like the square best.

It wouldn’t be Holy Crop! without a panorama so here goes:

Here is a 2×1 with no sky. Dark waters abound! I am still trimming some lens distortion from the image but little else.

I wanted to add the sky back in but I found it was too distracting. In the panoramic crop, notice how the snow-covered branch on the right is much more prominent without the sky.

If panoramic is good, cinematic must be better? Right? Here is a 2.5×1 crop where we’ve sacrificed the foreground water. The picture has changed from darkness to gray. Two different and equally valid treatments result. What happens if we take it farther?

The 3×1 takes it too far. The water dominates. The distant forest is lost. The framing is nice but we’ve split the image into two competing factions.

My Favorite:

I went back to the panorama and worked it backwards a little bit.

It is still almost a panorama crop but just under the 2:1 ratio. I decided the sliver of sky was too compelling a juxtaposition of exposure to pass up.  Leaving that bright sliver allows me to keep the curved branch on the left side of the tree on the right. I also kept enough of the dark water to close up the bottom. Those things decided, I just had to leave enough of the left to minimize optical distortion and just enough off the right to isolate the large tree.

Which did you like best?

Thanks to Jim for volunteering his image this month. If you want to be the Cropist’s victim in June, drop me an image for consideration.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

All images are Copyright © Jim Strand.

Jim’s photos can be seen here:

Jim is an amateur hobbyist that has been taking pictures since he was in the Army. Since 1970 he has always had a single lens reflex camera with a complement of different lenses, first 35mm film and most recently digital. In the last year he has had a fixed lens Canon G11 that he uses 80% of the time.  It has one major advantage… he has it with him when the picture happens.

ShareCropping: Mark Sirota’s “Sunset Couple”

February’s ShareCropping victim/volunteer is Mark Sirota.  Mark kindly answered my call for crop victims and submitted his very cool capture of a couple on a hillside at sunset. The image poses some unique challenges as well as opportunities to expose a new cropping guide: The Rule of Fifths. Let’s see what the Cropist comes up with.

Mark’s original image is shown above.  It is a very nice silhouette of a couple, a grassland and a bird in flight. All of this is set against an exquisite setting sun in an overcast sky.  The image, as all do,  has room for improvement so let’s put it in the Cropist Analyzer.

Analysis:

At first glance these were the issues I felt it necessary to mitigate.

1. The Horizon is pretty close to the center
2. The Sun is very centered
3. Areas toward the bottom and right are not contributing to the value of the image.
4. There are some bright clouds center-left and top-center that draw our eyes.
5. We have three subjects fairly out of balance due to size between and size of the two darker subjects.

With these considerations, our goal is to make a more compelling image.  And, as always, we will do this with a crop – well, a series of crops.

The Crops:

My first thought was to try and improve the story by eliminating the flying bird on the right-hand side of the sun. This made the picture more about the couple. I took some of the dead area off the bottom and cropped out the bright clouds left and top.  This isn’t bad. The horizon is better placed and the separation of the figures from the sun gives you a visual path to follow.

The bird was such a nice detail that I hated to leave it out.  I thought a Square Crop might get me back in. This time I decided to invoke my little-used tool the “Rule of Fifths”.  We are all familiar with the Rule of Thirds.  I placed the two figures on the lowest-leftest rule of fifth power point and pulled the square until the sun and bird looked in balance with he image.  Since I had restricted myself to square, I had to leave the lighter clouds at the top intact.  Were the sky slightly more powerful, I would have called it finished.

I returned to the original 3:2 aspect ration but brought things in a little tighter, relying on the rule of thirds to guide the crop.  We got rid of bottom and right and the bright clouds at the top and repositioned our horizon in the process. The balance, while better, is still a little off.  The crop is an improvement nonetheless.

I had hithertofore resisted the panoramic crop feeling it might be too cliché to go wide right away.  This 3:1 crop does pretty well. Using the lower rule of third as a horizon guide and placing the sun and figures on the lower power points, we end up with the image above. The figures pop in this image and, with the exception of the bright cloud on the left, really holds us in the bounds of the image.

We introduced the concept of Rule of Fifths so why not crop that way. Here I went 4:1 and placed the figures on the left-most rule of fifth.  I also used the lower rule to place the horizon on the right hand side of image. The crop is more dramatic and the figures become more prominent. 

I decided to step back from the 4:1 and return to the 3:1 but use the rule of fifths instead of the rule of thirds as I had done earlier. This image really makes the couple pop more. Balance is returning to the image. Distractions are all but eliminated.  I think this might be my favorite.

Torn:

I decided to take one more stab in spite of my affection for the 3:1 Rule of Fifths image. I decided to step back once more to the 2:1 panorama crop but still keep the Rule of Fifths spacing.  I am really torn between the last two crops.  The prominence of the figures in the former is very compelling but the addition of the dark sky adds a quasi-vignetting effect. Both are nice and, like Natalie Imbruglia, I am torn.

Thanks to Mark Sirota for contributing the image for the February edition of ShareCropping.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

The Sunset image is © Mark Sirota.

Mark Sirota is a serious hobbyist and part time professional photographer living near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More of his work can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_sirota/

A Call for ShareCropping Images

We have no image submitted for our ShareCropping segment for the second day of the month of February 2011. I need an image! If you are interested in being the February victim, please contact me with your candidate image.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

ShareCropping: Holly Kuchera’s “The Discovery”

Holly Kuchera is the new year’s first victim in the ShareCropping arena. Today we will look at Holly’s image “The Discovery” and see if we can discover new crops for her stunning image.  Sometimes the photographer does all the cropping necessary in-camera. When that happens we are hard-pressed to crop for improvement.

Above is the uncropped version of “The Discovery”.  Stunning fall colors a marvelous reflection, well thought-out composition and a nostalgic subject all combine to make a very pleasant photo.  Let’s run it through the Cropist’s critical eye and see what we can see (or can’t).

Analysis:

There are few issues with the image at first glance. The Rule of Thirds compositional tool was used well placing the waterline on the lower rule and the boat at the lower power point.  There was enough dark water left below the reflection to hold the bright area within the image boundaries. I did see four items that concerned me in the uncropped original.

1. There is a lot of dead space top and right. The colors and textures are nice but it almost feels like the space was left there just to satisfy the compositional rule of thirds requirement.  The flow or movement in the image doesn’t make use of this space.
2. There is a little distracting background detail on the left in front of the boat. A bench or picnic table breaks up the otherwise tranquil background.
3. The boat is looking both ways. The front of the boat is facing left and very near the edge making it seem like it is ready to drive out of frame.  The seats on the back deck are facing right drawing our eyes to the middle of the frame.  If there were people there, the back would be stronger. If there was boat movement, the front would be stronger. As it is, both end of the boat compete with each other.
4. The boat though centered on the left rule of thirds, is such a wide subject that it appears to be centered in the left hand half of the picture. It divides the picture almost in half-creating subject side and empty side. This is a tough composition to pull off well.

The Crops:

My first inclination was to eliminate the dead area to the top and make the boat a little more prominent.  This crop was about the boat and not the reflection. The horizontal aspect ratio drives our eye to the front of the boat where the rule of space says the boat is crowding the edge.

I didn’t like that I lost the reflection. It is one of my favorite parts of the image.  I figured I would try to eliminate the vast space to the right of the boat with a Portrait crop.  By centering the boat, I can essentially eliminate the tension of the front/back issue. This isn’t bad and the turned-over aluminum boat on the shore really holds us to the right.

We tried portrait and landscape so why not square.  Here I came in a little off the top and a little off the right and ended up with a nice square. We left the waterline on the lower rule and placed the right rule in the space where we would expect a person standing off the back rail. A little in from the left helps push out the picnic table distraction.

I like 2:1 Aspect Ratios. Here I left just enough dark to hold the bright reflection and took off enough of the top to keep the waterline on the lower rule. The image looks ‘in-half’ doesn’t it? I like the top and bottom crop but not the left-right.

If the image is in-half maybe you just get rid of one half. I decided to halve the 2:1 to a square crop and go tighter than I had in the first square crop I tried.  Notice how much more focus that chair sitting on the back deck has in this tighter crop.  I like this better than the first square crop- especially that dark hole upper left…

My Favorite:

My favorite crop is nearly square 12:11. This crop resulted from “carving an elephant”. I took each boundary and cut off what I didn’t like. Space off the top, space off the right were amputated until I was happy with what was left.  The bottom was trimmed to just barely hold the dark boundary around the reflection. The left was trimmed to destroy the outline of the picnic table and force the focus of the boat to the back. The boat doesn’t look centered horizontally or vertically. The waterline doesn’t bisect the image and we kept enough of the stunning autumn foliage.

Your eye is drawn to the porch and aluminum boat area which to me is the “missing story” of the image.

Now if there were just a small child sitting on the back with a fishing line trailing into the river…

Thanks to Holly Kuchera for being this month’s victim.

I am looking for a victim for February’s edition of ShareCropping. Email me if you are interested.

Rikk Flohr © 2011

Discovery Image and derivatives are © Holly Kuchera.

When it comes to photography, Holly Kuchera is something of an omnivore as she enjoys photographing just about every subject you can imagine. If you don’t find her out and about the Minneapolis/St Paul area exercising her camera, check behind her desk where she spends a lot of time “getting creative” with her images.

More of Holly’s work (photos & blog!) can be found at www.tortoiseproductions.com

ShareCropping: Mark Clement’s “High Falls”

 

Mark Clements, eager December Cropist victim, sent me this image of the High Falls on the Grassy River. Mark chose a near anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.36 giving it a wide-screen cinema feel.  I like the crop but it feels a little left-heavy and that may be due to the darkening of the river applied in post-processing.

When I looked at the image, I became a little suspicious of it and wrote Mark for more information. It turns out this wasn’t a single shot but rather a stitched Panorama.  I asked Mark for the original stitched version from which to begin our exercise.

Mark was kind enough to oblige and sent me the raw images of his Nikon P5100 capture. You can see the river is much lighter here and not so out-of-balance. It was -36° C when he shot this picture. It is a very good capture and a nice stitch job.  It is a pity Mark didn’t have his DSLR along though.

Analysis:

Looking at the original stitch, I see many things I like.

1. The leading lines are fabulous and take you to a reasonable place.
2. The twigs in the foreground left are a little distracting-especially those which don’t touch the ground.
3. The right hand side is a good anchor. That tree really holds the right edge of the frame.
4. The pano-stitching program left a lot of dead areas that either need to be filled or cropped out. Cropping them severely reduces the image area and eliminates some nice details.

The Crops:

This crop goes after maximum area. It takes the pano-stitch and simply chops off the unfilled areas. Not bad but a little “in-half” on the implied horizon. We can do better.

Part of cropping is straightening and correcting perspective.  I ran a little perspective correction in Lightroom 3.0 and received this image.  It is a subtle change but one I felt needed applying.

There were some distractions in the lower left (a partial ice patch and a dark object on the far bank. I decided to crop these out as best I could and keep the eye from wandering there. Some of the nearer snow-covered shapes bottom center suffered when I did this.

I decide to go 8×10 on this bad boy and see what I could find. I kicked it over to the right to see what it would look like if I altered the vanishing point from right center to dead center. No. It didn’t work.

Next I went to a 1×3 Panoramic Crop and took out the foreground completely. This moved the horizon and vanishing point up a little. While it is a reasonable interpretation, and I am not unhappy with this crop.  I still think there’s work to do.

I also tried a square just to see what would result. The square with the river/ice boundary placed at the lower left corner worked pretty good. Again, I am not unhappy with this crop.

While I was being there and being square, I decided to zoom in tight. After all, Mark has lots of megapixels here. Some of the close crops made for nice winter abstracts. I particularly liked this one.  If you haven’t read my article on ultra-cropping, you might want to check it out.

I thought a vertical pano crop might work as well. After trying several, this was the portrait crop I liked best.

Back to the Drawing Board:

I wrote an article a while back on anti-cropping.  Anti-cropping is where you take an image into the new features in Photoshop to add back areas missing from the picture.  I took Mark’s original stitch back into Photoshop and anti-cropped it using content-aware fill.

This was the result. I gained back a lot of territory and now have a complete ice-covered rock at lower left again. More of the twigs lower left are grounded too. I gained some space on the top as well.  But as some of you might say this is ‘cheating’ I discarded it as a final crop candidate.

My Favorite:

I felt it important that the stream/ice interface occupy the lower left corner.  I also felt it important to show the curve of the branch unbroken from the trunk into the scene so I left just enough space to hold the curve in frame (upper right)’ Since I dared not take anything off the right-hand tree, my crop was set by the dictating values of the two opposing corners (lower left and upper right).

With cropping this is as far as I would go.  My personal preference is for the anti-cropped version but, as I said, I didn’t want to be accused of deviating from the Holy Crop! mission.  I found it interesting that the final crop aspect ratio ended up being 1.63. The Golden Ratio is, after all, 1.618. Coincidence?

Thanks to Mark for playing this month and submitting his wonder winter image to the Cropist’s whims.  Stay tuned on the second of the January where we tackle Holly Kuchera’s “The Discovery” image.

Rikk Flohr © 2010

Images in this article are © Mark Clement.

Mark Clement currently resides in Shania Twain’s hometown of Timmins, Ontario.  He spends most of his weekends out in the great outdoors either photographing waterfalls or some of the numerous wildlife available in the area.

He can be reached at his website.