Tuesday in Texas - Oh, Crop!

I often wonder how people got to "the photo," the one that they are willing to publish share.  For what it's worth, I'm going to share that process with one of my own recent images.  The reason that I am writing about this particular photo is because the journey from beginning to end was circuitous and not my normal process.

I do try to get my photos composed correctly in camera.  I really do!  But, sometimes, for various reasons, that doesn't happen.  

• I haven't thought through the shot that I really want.
• I have the wrong lens on my camera for the image I want
• I missed some distraction in the foreground or background
• My exposure was not spot on and I end up with areas that are blown out, too dark, or both

This list can probably go on in infinitude...  The bottom line is that sometimes we don't get what we want and we are forced to try and "save" the image, make it what we want it to be.

Beyond the basic adjustments like brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, clarity, and sharpening, I am not skilled at editing.  I know that LOTS of things are possible with Photoshop, but I don't know how to do most of them.  And the truth is, I am only interested in editing my photos for aesthetics's sake, not to alter the reality or the story of the image.  It would be nice to "get rid" of my wrinkles or my rough aged hands in my self portraits, but they are who I am (sadly); they are the story of today.  I do, however, crop photos. For some reason that I can't explain, I prefer an aspect ratio of 4:5 rather than 4:6, especially with portraits, but sometimes with other images as well.  So even with a photo that is well-composed in camera, I may still do this basic crop.

With the photo that I am about to share, there is more than a basic crop.  I missed the mark on what I wanted and I used "creative cropping" to save the shot.

The saga begins with the Capture Your 365 prompt from January 14, "Black and White."  I decided that I was going to photograph one of the buildings in our city's historical park.  Unfortunately, I could not get out to do this until about 5:00, leaving me only about 30 minutes to accomplish the shot before it got dark.  The historical park contains several buildings and I wasn't sure which one I wanted to photograph so I wasted a little time wandering around making that decision.  I finally settled on a little log cabin with a rocking chair on the porch.  It was this rocking chair to which I was drawn.  Now with only fifteen minutes, I started shooting...focusing on the chair, the window, the door, the porch, the surroundings...this was a case where I didn't not have a clear image of what I wanted.  I thought it was the chair, but maybe it was the window.  I tried a few different angles, not taking everything into consideration that I should have.  When I got home and started looking at the images on the computer, the results of my haphazard approach were revealed.  Straight out of the camera, not a single image was what I wanted compositionally.  I began trying to figure out some way to salvage one of the shots.

One thing I had done that was a good thing, was that I shot the photos in monochrome, so I did not have to consider what was going to happen when I did the conversion to black and white.  I find that I shoot differently, focusing more on lines and textures, when I shoot in monochrome rather than color.  Even that, though, didn't help me much here.

As I looked through all of the photos, I realized that what I wanted in my photograph was the window and the rocking chair.  I didn't have a single image that included those two things in a way that I liked.

Here I cut the window in a seriously bad way, centered the rocking chair, and blew out the sky.  This one went to the reject file almost immediately.

From the composition perspective, this is more what I wanted, but the blown out sky completely drew my eye away from the chair and the window.  I tried adding a sepia filter to tone it down a little, but again, it didn't work for me.

Back to the drawing board.  I didn't have a whole lot more from which to choose. At this point,  I was becoming frustrated and disappointed in myself for not doing a better job of thinking about what I was doing while I was behind the camera.  In the long run, being fully present then would have been a whole lot easier and less time consuming than trying to work some kind of post-processing magic.

My last hope was this image.

Initially I did a little bit of brightening and upped the contrast a little bit.  This one was definitely the best choice of the bunch, but it still was not what I now thought that I wanted.  

Here is where the serious cropping begins.  Because of what I felt was too much porch in the foreground,  I decided to see what would happen if I cropped this photo to landscape.

Things were now getting better, but the dark door added a heaviness to the left side of the frame that I didn't like.  On the plus side though, this angle got rid of the blown out sky on the right, leaving some nice lines and texture in the tree and fence.  For a brief moment, I felt that I could live with this being my final image for the day (with the initial brightening and contrast boost that are not seen in the above image).

However, the more I looked at it, I kept feeling like the balance was off.  Something about that dark, heavy door was making me unhappy.  I stared at the image for what felt like an eternity and then it hit me.  Crop it back to portrait.

Yes!  This is the composition that I wanted.  Finally.  And after a whole bunch more cropping than I ever do on a photo.    I saw no alternative with this one.  I now have the window and the rocker composed correctly and a nice, non-distacting, background.  I then added a slight warming filter as this photo was taken during the golden hour and the slightly brownish tone is reminiscent of the true tone of the cabin.  And just in case you are wondering...yes, I could have cropped the priginal portrait photo and gotten to this point more quickly, but I needed to go through this entire process to come to that realization.

This is not a process that I have the time or energy for on a regular basis, but I wanted to redeem the thirty minutes that I spent on this particular day's images.  I think I also needed to forgive myself for not being as attentive to the details as I should have been while I was actually shooting.

In the case of this image, I don't think that the crop altered the reality of the photo or its story.  For this reason, ethically I am OK with my solution.

For me personally, I always feel like I learn more from seeing a process rather than just the final product.  I hope this helps you to redeem a photo of your own one of these days.  Don't give up on a photo too quickly!

Happy shooting!