Wildlife Photography across the Water: Crop Format

Monday, 22 August 2011

Crop Format - Portrait or Landscape?

With a lovely sunny warm Sunday, I grabbed a few quick images from the garden yesterday. This Common Blue was quite obliging for me - unlike the Red Admiral and Gatekeepers that I was hoping to get some decent images of.

This image came out reasonably well in the breezy conditions, resting on dead Knapweed.

I thought I would crop in the two formats from the same image and get your take on it.

Which do you prefer? and why?

The landscape falls most comfortably on the eye to me, but as Dave has said many times before it is always worth getting your subject in both formats.

For the purposes of this image, the original was taken in landscape, and I have cropped accordingly.

Martin

3 comments:

robbieb22 August 2011 at 19:14
Hi Martin, for me they both work. The first has space at the side if you wanted to put in any text etc and the 2nd one follows the general vertical flow of the picture - if you know what I mean

Robbie
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Scott Hervieux22 August 2011 at 21:10
Hi Martin,

I email back and forth with Dave all the time.... To me the landscape (horizontal crop) is more appealing as it gives some breathing room between the antennae and the edge of the picture. Now the portrait (vertical) crop does show more of the weed. Both are good pics, and it is a matter of perspective. However, since most pics are landscape and that is what we become used to - the landscape is easier to take. the vertical (while a very nice pic) speaks to me of being taken from a camera phone, as all camera phones are vertical pics.

Depending on the original, I may have not cropped the pic. Take this pic of a Monarch. cropping would have destroyed the composition. Note this was not take with a DSLR, rather a bridge camera as my DSLR is out for repairs.

http://www.shervieuxphotography.com/Nature/Nature/18283486_mvM9zZ#1435461236_kCxZhMX

IIf you really needed to crop, could you have done a slight combination of the two? Horizontal, but showing more of the weed? If you look around my galleries, the only ones I cropped were of the seahawk/osprey as there was a way too much white sky and I needed to crop to see more of the bird (can't wait to get me DLSR back, I now have a 2X teleconverter I am dying to try out).
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WPATW23 August 2011 at 16:03
Scott
Looking at your monarch image i think some cropping would enhance the image, The butterfly is fairly central in the image with wasted space behind it, I would look at the rule of thirds, Take some off of the left and top, Removing the pink flower behind, Its not a bad image but i feel could be more dynamic,As a stock image its fine, Also note the difference in background between your image and Martins, Now i guess that you could say that your image shows habitat which it does but Martins would be more marketable due to the clean background, There are no distractions and its a nice clean image, The background could be used for text or just to show the subject off better

Dave
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Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.