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This is a cropped shot of the sea at Collaroy early one morning. I am still in a quandry about the cropping. I have already cropped out the blown highlights (called the sun!) and a fair bit of sand at the bottom. I am left with a square crop which to me does not suit the image (and makes it a tad difficult to print on A4 or A3). If I cut out the sand, it leaves me with a dead centre horizon (now I know you can break rules). If I crop to the right, leaving in the nice sunlit cloud, it deletes the beautiful sea to the left. I am reluctant to crop out any of the sky. You can see my problem. BTW, I know I should have removed the object to the right bottom.

Any suggestions would be appreciated and you can post your version with my permission


Cheers
Sheila

My only suggestion would be to crop up to just below the breaking wave which would not place the horizon dead centre. All of the ”quality” IMO is just above the horizon clouds so a dual crop making a pseudo pano might work.

Sheila

A lovely image and it's colour (all your rest here have been B & W ) I agree completely with Chris. Crop the bottom so the wave touches the bottom left corner of the frame, crop the top a little above the cloud bank (maybe 1/2 way between the cloud bank and the top). This also results in a darker, more moody sky in counterpoint to the golden water, but keeps the bright spot of sun on the RH clouds so we know where all that light is coming from. The bottom crop moves that whimsical bit of human debris to a stronger position in the frame too (which BTW works for me in this image because it is such a stark reminder that we humans always manage to desecrate natures perfection ).

Something like this:

Hi Sheila

perhaps a portrait crop starting from the right
you get the sky a nice part of the water and the sand

beautiful image by the way

Ditto Chris and Peter Sheila. Furthermore I'd be tempted to crop just a tad more from the top of the frame and get rid of that little blowout at the top right hand corner which leaves the viewer an uninterrupted image with that gorgeous sunbreak on the cloud in the top THIRD(there we go with the rules but they are rules for a reason ). It really does add sparkle to the image
cheers
marco

just playing ...

just another thought, I wonder what would happen if you resized the image non linearly (without proportions constrained) so that it did scale on a4 or a3

Although cropping the sand out is also good, I dont think the sand contributes to the image anyhow.

Steve

totally different sort of crop... and sans bottle. also added a velvia look just for fun ???

cropped to an A3........
darken of the sky and more of a warm look to the foreground and a little retouch to the sand as I thing the bottle and a few footsteps takes away the loneness.......done in LAB color
and comming from smugmug to DSLR, I have lost a lot of the warm look I had........

Thanks all for the time spent in cropping this image. They all look great but I have gone for Big Pix version as its closest to what I was thinking when I took the shot.

Cheers
Sheila

Glad that we could help, Sheila. Are you keeping the can (or bottle?)

I think not! (Thinks of something really erudite to say but has just returned from a couple of drinks at lunchtime so will pass )

Cheers
Sheila