Exercise - Cropping

In this exercise I have selected 3 different photographs and cropped each for differing reasons.

1.

 This first photograph of a parade at a French fete I felt that the quickly taken original had quite a few distracting features and lost the strong image of the girls marching. The blue sign and on the opposite side the roof of the stall, the foreground of tarmac wasn't of much interest either so I have cropped tightly to maximise the powerful marching, enhanced by the shadowing on the road. The impact works great and the frame is full of the action with no distraction. I think the finished result gives a strong, almost military strenght to the shot. This has inspired me to play with the version 3 and age the photo with a sepia tone effect and make it look from the 1930's...just for fun.

2.

In this second photo which was part of an audience at a small outside festival in Chepstow in the summer. The original had the chair on the righthand side which I found distracting but liked the overall composition of people together within the wider 'togetherness' of the crowd. I cropped the shot down to just one of the small sub groups to bring out this intimacy.

3.

In this 3rd photo from my recent trip to the Brecon Beacons I have cropped the original to leave just an exaggerated wide vista containing mainly the horizon and the small characters walking. I like the original but think the cropping give this a powerful and effective panorama.