Michael Seewald Workshop - Part 2

There is a continuation of my earlier entry detailing what I learned at the Michael Seewald Workshop. This section details the magic of cropping.

Once we had practiced how your eye moves, we worked on cropping. I rarely crop my images and have always felt they had to fit in to the dimensions of the standard print sizes. Michael Seewald actually spends a great deal of thought to cropping his images. To me, it was amazing to see how much improvement you can make with cropping. Start with 3 questions.

• What made you take the picture?
• What do you notice first? Is that what you wanted?
• What is strong and weak in the image?

Here is a starting point of an infrared image taken recently in Sunol at the Little Yosemite area. Question 1: Why did I take the picture? Answer: I liked the waterfall with the rock wall as framing. Question 2: Is the waterfall my primary focal point?....

Answer: No. The leaves in front of the waterfall are the primary focus point. They are a distraction.

So, next step lets remove the leaves. Now, look at the image and see if the waterfall looks more prominent.

Note: Roll mouse over image for original.

Question 3: What is strong and what is weak? Answer: The weak area is the left-hand side and the top of the image. Also, the waterfall is too central. The waterfal would be more powerul if cropped to move closer to a point along the rule of thirds.

Note: Roll mouse over image for uncropped.

Here is another example of how cropping can improve an image. For this one, I did not expect cropping to make an improvement. But as you can see, a little crop can make a difference.

Note: Roll mouse over image to compare to see cropped.

Here is my final example. This is scene from Limanour Beach up in Point Reyes has a weak sky.

Note: Roll mouse over image to compare to see cropped.