Crop Rotation

This view can be seen at the start of the StillWalks video “Winter Lakeside Walk” which features Llyn Llech Owain in South West Wales. The widescreen video necessitates the landscape crop but to avoid the need to click and zoom on an image in this WordPress theme, the crop is better rotated to the portrait format.

I find cropping images a fascinating challenge and whilst this is first done when framing the shot on the camera, the requirements of different purposes and platforms such as square for Instagram as well as those below forces me to look at the photos with a new “focus” on their impact. It is not ideal to do heavy cropping of any image but where the output is for screen rather than print, this is not such a big issue.

The images I am posting this week are all from the “Winter Lakeside Walk” production shoot and each day will offer a landscape and portrait crop of the selected image. Which do you prefer?

Watch the video at the bottom of this post.

sunrise

sunrise

Perspective, Viewpoint and Cropping

I tried different crops on both these photos in the Carmarthenshire countryside. In each case I thought the crop closest to the original photo was best but if you look on Instagram you will be able to see a different crop to this first shot. My preference is for this view because I find the composition of the diagonal and horizontal lines of the hedgerows in the background give an attractive cap to the flow and direction of the fence and its perspective. A square crop would make much less difference to the second shot where it is the textures and patterns I find of greatest interest.

Complementary images to my walks this week can be found directly on Instagram or via the sidebar images on the StillWalks blog. Images displayed here and on Instagram are a mixture of iPhone and Canon DSLR photography.

Carmarthenshire Fence

Carmarthenshire Gate