To crop or not to crop - that is the question

[UrsaMajor]

A few weeks ago I took a post-sunset photo while visiting the city in which I was born and raised. I think that I want to make a print for the wall of my study, and I think that it would work better if cropped as shown below. However, I have the nagging feeling that it might actually be better with less cropping, or possibly even zero cropping.

As I am thinking of cropping the image

As captured -no cropping

Comments and suggestions would be appreciated.

With best wishes,
- Tom -

PS
Although it is not relevant to my question, I see that the colors are a bit different (darker) in my browser than in my color-managed editor. That's not a surprise, as I was aware that this sort of thing can happen, but it's the first time that I have experienced it with one of my own images on line.

[harveyzone]

A few weeks ago I took a post-sunset photo while visiting the city in which I was born and raised. I think that I want to make a print for the wall of my study, and I think that it would work better if cropped as shown below. However, I have the nagging feeling that it might actually be better with less cropping, or possibly even zero cropping.

Personally, I prefer the uncropped of the two... I don't like the half cropped post in the bottom right. If you are going to crop, I would be a little less agressive - try leaving the ground beneath the post on (and all of the yellow reflection) and cropping around where the reflection of the land reaches the edge on the left.

[aster]

Hi,

I prefer the uncropped version because I believe the foreground is very rich with elements that tell the story of that region and the surrounding environment.

Yildiz

[jcoffin]

I like the un-cropped version. If you want to crop it, I'd consider something milder:

This at least retains the nice reflection of the brightly lit cloud in the water. I still like the original though.

[bossel]

I'd also go for the uncropped version. Having this bid of land in the bottom right corner adds to the feeling of depths. JCoffins suggestion is also very good.

[Winston]

For me, the trouble with the crop is that it makes the object in the lower-right corner (sign, nest-box?) more prominent to the point that it starts to become a distraction. I would begin by removing that.

[UrsaMajor]

For me, the trouble with the crop is that it makes the object in the lower-right corner (sign, nest-box?) more prominent to the point that it starts to become a distraction. I would begin by removing that.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions. I think that you (Winston) identified what it is that was bothering me the most about the crop that I had been considering. As soon I read the comment above, I realized that although I was debating about how much river reflection to include, what really detracted the most from the crop (in my eyes) is the distraction the reflector post becomes.

Off-topic comment: The object in the lower right corner is a reflector post for the use of river traffic. It is located at a bend in the river, which is a major tributary of the Ohio River and carries a lot of traffic day and night - as exemplified by the picture below of a 3x3 string of barges carrying coal.

River traffic in early springtime

With best wishes,
- Tom -

[jcoffin]

Sounds like a bit of an anomaly. FYI Firefox has a color management plugin available. I edit on an extended gamut monitor and I MUST use a color managed browser otherwise many colors are absolutely positively garish on it.

-Sonolta

As you say, there is a plug-in available. The plug-in isn't really necessary though. All the plug-in does is turn on the color management that's already built into FireFox. If you want, you can turn it on without the plug-in though. The steps involved are:

• start FireFox and enter: "about:config" as the address to browse.
• You'll get a warning that you can cause problems if you edit carelessly, so be careful.
[/*]
• Type "color_management" into the "filter" at the top of the screen.
• That should leave only a few items, one of which will be gfx.color_management.enabled. Set that to true.
• There should also be one for the profile for your monitor -- make sure it's set to an appropriate file.