Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #96: Cropping the Shot

A friend taught me long ago not to zoom in so much when taking a photo – you can always crop it later to get rid of unwanted ‘stuff’ to create a completely different view of an image, or improve the composition of the shot.

Our friend Patti at P.A. Moed has challenged us to illustrate the cropping technique. I do this quite often during the editing process.

Here goes!

1. The other day, we were playing cribbage on the patio and I happened to snap this shot with my two faves and their tongues.

In order to highlight the cuteness of this situation – not sure who was imitating whom – I cropped the image to highlight their sweet faces. Sean’s noggin also looked a little on the large side so I cropped part of that as well.

Additionally, I edit iPhone images with the Google app, Snapseed and love it. There are a ton of different filters, etc. and it’s easy to use. Yogi is so dark, it’s hard to pick up his expressions so the “drama” filter was used below to lighten his face and enhance the color of the blues.

“They say imitation is a form of flattery, but honey, it’s time to get your own ideas”

~unknown~

Flowers always seem to bring joy into our home, so they are a constant staple these days. The Stargazer Lilies below are a day old and smell fantastic – their scent permeates throughout the house. I couldn’t have them when kitties were running around as they are lethal when ingested (dogs are ok). The image below was taken from the top of the bouquet.

My focus went straight to the center of the flower where all the reproductive ‘bits’ are. I thought the contrast of the green, pink and orange colors was interesting, so this section of the flower was cropped. A feature to enhance the contrast of the details was also used – you can almost ‘feel’ the softness of the anther.

“Earth laughs in flowers”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

As you can see, one can do all kinds of cool things to images when cropping the shot.

Happy editing!

…..i choose this….

Pam