The Photography Tip of the Week #067

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing, Podcast

Some place to go

067 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

Occasionally you will take a photo that you really want to recompose. These are often when you have your subject in the dead center of the frame. There’s nothing wrong with having the subject in the center of the frame, but depending on the image it may lack interest. Simply recomposing the photo will make it much better. But if you didn’t do it in the field, you’ll have to do it in post. This is the one benefit of high megapixel cameras, the ability to crop an image without losing the shot. Below is a photo I took where I liked the overall look, but it seemed to be missing that little bit extra to make it a truly nice photo.

Original Image of Mother and Son walking on the beach

With this image there are so many possibilities for cropping, but in most cases you will want to use the rule of thirds for recomposition. The rule of thirds simply put says to place your subject on a horizontal or vertical line one third in from the edge. But for this image there are still many possibilities. I have two of which shown in blue and red. We could even change the aspect ratio to landscape, but for this we’ll leave it portrait.

A couple possible crops for the photo

So what is one to do? Which crop is the best. Well you need to look at what story are you trying to tell with your subject. For this type of portrait, is it “some place to go” or “where have we been?” For a nice stroll on the beach I think some place to go is more important. It speaks to the future instead of the past. So I want to have more photo in front of them instead of behind. And I’ll choose a crop close to the red option. Many times your image will have a very obvious crop once you decide. If not keep your thirds line either through the eyes or through the body. With two people in the photo like this, I’ll keep a line through the eyes since the eyes are on the same level and the vertical line between the people with the edge going down their side. This mimics the crop of the image as if I was cropping in tight.

Final crop choice for the photo