Can You Find the Animal Shape in this Twisty Storm?
A Tale of Three Crops
We had thunderstorms one evening last week. Of course I brought my camera and took some pictures. Out of 56 images, there were exactly two that I liked.
The first one was unambiguous. I loved it even before I edited it.
This second one was a bit more complicated.
I knew I wanted to edit the image in high contrast Black & White. But I couldn’t decide on how much of the scene to include. I really liked all the detail in the clouds on the left, as well as the mountains and a darker part of the base. I wanted to like the smaller white cloud off in the distant far right of the image. But I couldn’t decide whether it was interesting or distracting.
This was maybe a little bit better. It cut out the distracting white cloud, but it still feels like there is an interesting side of the image and a not interesting side.
Then Kelly came along and gave me a helpful assist …
A vertical crop for the win!!!
This one keeps the focus exclusively on the most interesting parts of the storm cloud. I also like how it transitions from light to dark as your eye moves down the image from the top left towards the mountains the base of the clouds.
If I was only going to share one, it would probably be this last vertical crop.
What do you think?
Do you agree with Kelly?
Or would you have gone in different direction?
Please let me know …
p.s. did you find an animal shape in the clouds?
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I like all three. However, a couple of suggestions; (a) I find the white line in the foreground distracting, so I might be tempted to crop in or clone it out and (b) I prefer the 16:9 crop version but I suspect there's some additional drama which could be pulled out of the horizon by adding some brightness / contrast. The scene reminds me of a sea ferry crossing I did between Uig and Stornoway several years ago.
I agree, vertical crop FTW!
All of the crops have their good points, but I feel like the vertical crop brings you closer into the storm. And so, IMHO, it has the greatest impact.