Richard Ditch<\/a>,\u00a0I’ve become fond of strong\u00a0graphic lines in some of my images, as long as those lines come from natural or rustic elements (power poles or wires just won’t cut it with me).<\/p>\nThis summer I photographed a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk on an old, rustic pole\u00a0fence in Beaverhead County, Montana and I’m having a very difficult\u00a0time making cropping decisions on some of those images.\u00a0 My natural tendency is to crop fairly tightly on the bird to get good detail on the subject but I also like the graphic lines provided by the fence with different cropping choices.\u00a0 Several times I’ve thought I’d finally figured\u00a0out which version I prefer, but when I came back to the\u00a0computer a few hours later and looked at them one more time I was again undecided.\u00a0 Compositional mind games!<\/p>\n
The four\u00a0\u00a0images below are a case in point.\u00a0 All four were taken within a few\u00a0seconds of each other and\u00a0from the same\u00a0vantage point, so the backgrounds are the same.\u00a0 The poses are nearly identical and the hawk didn’t move on the perch.\u00a0 Techs on all four were: 1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 400, 500 f\/4, 1.4 tc<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
![\"red](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-9323-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red")
<\/p>\n
Horizontal composition that takes advantage of the graphic line provided by the fence rail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"red](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-9328-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red")
<\/p>\n
Vertical composition to match the vertical pose of the hawk and allow the lower fence rail to provide another graphic line.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"red](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-9336-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red")
<\/p>\n
Another vertical crop that includes all three fence rails, wire and vegetation at the bottom but makes the bird significantly smaller in the frame and higher in the composition.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"red](\"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/red-tailed-hawk-9337-ron-dudley1.jpg\" "\\"red")
<\/p>\n
A relatively tight crop on the bird, which shows off the subject better but\u00a0loses most of the graphic lines of the fence.<\/p>\n
I’m curious how\u00a0some of my readers\u00a0may react to these different compositions and wonder which\u00a0one(s) you\u00a0might prefer.\u00a0 Just because I’m fond of graphic lines and rustic fences doesn’t mean that\u00a0others necessarily have\u00a0the same tastes.\u00a0 And since I’m not the only “consumer” of my photographs, I’d value any feedback along these lines that you’d care to share.<\/p>\n
Thanks!<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are times when I really struggle with composition when I’m cropping an image.\u00a0 To a\u00a0degree, composition is a matter of taste and personal preference, though most folks would agree on a few major principles.\u00a0 Some of those might be: avoid clipping body parts or cropping too tight on the subject the subject usually (though not always) should not be centered in the frame leave plenty of room in the\u00a0 frame in the direction the subject is facing, looking or flying (in the case of birds) Where I sometimes\u00a0run into difficulty making a composition decision\u00a0is when there are other compositional elements in the image that I might like to include in the final version of the photo.\u00a0 Thanks largely to the influence of Richard Ditch,\u00a0I’ve become fond of strong\u00a0graphic lines in some of my images, as long as those lines come from natural or rustic elements (power poles or wires just won’t cut it with me). This summer I photographed a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk on an old, rustic pole\u00a0fence in Beaverhead County, Montana and I’m having a very difficult\u00a0time making cropping decisions on some of those images.\u00a0 My natural tendency is to crop fairly tightly on the bird to get good detail on the subject but I also like the graphic lines provided by the fence with different cropping choices.\u00a0 Several times I’ve thought I’d finally figured\u00a0out which version I prefer, but when I came back to the\u00a0computer a few hours later and looked at them one more time I was again undecided.\u00a0 Compositional mind…<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,450],"tags":[779,452,916,920,918,919,921,922,220,451,923],"class_list":["post-8637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-red-tailed-hawks","tag-beaverhead-county","tag-buteo-jamaicensis","tag-composition","tag-compositional-elements","tag-cropping","tag-cropping-guidelines","tag-graphic-lines","tag-horizontal-composition","tag-montana-2","tag-red-tailed-hawk","tag-vertical-composition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-2fj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}