Trogon Photo Tours

November 2014 - This month's photography instruction article is about cropping images and goes over 5 images that have either been published and/or won an award, starting with the original capture and showing how and why I cropped it the way that I did.  I selected images which had won awards and/or been published to show that I wasn't the only person who thought the end resulting crop was a good result.  Having used a full frame camera most of the time the past couple of years, it's been more likely that I have had to crop images than when I used a cropped sensor camera in the past.  With the 5D3's 22 megapixels and superior image quality it allows for fairly large crops.  However based on what I have seen from the Canon 7DII it's likely I will go back to using a crop sensor camera soon.

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Sandhill Cranes photographed November 2009 at Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico.  Canon 1D Mark III, 500F4 1.4x teleconverter, 1/400 at F8, iso 400, handheld.  This is the original full frame image, I was attracted to the scene with the cranes calling knowing I would have to crop it later. 

Here is the image as I cropped it.  Most of this one is fairly obvious, I had to crop it from the bottom to take the out of focus cranes there out of the image and I cropped more tightly from the top to emphasize the interaction.  The only thing I would consider doing differently with this crop would be to take a bit more from each side to make it more of a vertical and less square, but since I had already cropped it quite a bit I left the sides a bit wider.  After all with the 1D3 I was working with just 10 megapixels to start with.  This image was published in one of the previous NANPA expresssions photo contests book. 

Hippopotamus - photographed August 2013, Chobe, Botswana.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/500 F8, iso 800, handheld from boat,original full frame capture.

Here is how I ended up cropping the image.  The first and easiest decision was to crop out the ears of the hippo on the right.  It's generally not good to have something besides the main subject at the edge of a frame which will pull your attention away from the subject, having those ears there would leave me wondering where the eyes from that hippo are.  By cropping just to smooth part of the neck there is nothing left to distract me.  The next decision was to crop some from the left.  Seeing as I had cropped from the right, this left the main hippo's head and eye right in the center of the frame and most of his face pointing to the right of center in the direction he was looking which is also generally not preferable.  Also by cropping tighter in on his head it focuses more attention on his head and eye. The last decision was to crop out the water on the bottom.  This was an easy decision for me because leaving it in would have made the frame squarish which I generally try to avoid and removing it makes us focus more on just the textures of the hippos and again on the subject.  This image will be in the 2015 NANPA Showcase along with 6 more of my images. 

Water Monitor Lizard eating Land Crab, Chobe, Botswana September 2014.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2500 F6.3, iso 800, handheld from boat.  Original full frame capture.  We came upon this Water Monitor trying to eat this large land crab during our most recent Botswana tour.  At first I was shooting with my teleconverter on but then I decided to take it off and try to get more of the lizard's body in the frame.  It turns out that was a mistake as this turned out to be by far the best combination of eye contact and position of the crab in the monitor's mouth and I would rather have had it close up to have more detail there.  

This is how I ended up cropping it in the end.  At first I tried to go for a close up of just the head and crab excluding any of the front legs and cropping more tightly from the right but I just didn't think the result held up well enough.  I also considered including more of the lizard's body on the left as well as some of the out of focus branch below him.  After looking at these crops I decided against it as it made the monitor's head and the crab smaller in the frame and they obviously needed to be the focal point.  Also I ended up cropping the out of focus branch at the bottom because it was, well out of focus and therefore distracting.  So what I ended up with was a compromise of sorts with the monitor's head pretty centered in the frame and some of the tree branch on the right included.  I wasn't thrilled with the result but it was the best I was able to come up with.  The image did win an editor's pick in the wildlife section of www.naturescapes.net so the moderators there must have liked it.  Also someone commented that the branch on the right balanced the lizard nicely and there is some truth to that I think if it was just blank grass it would feel a bit empty on the right.  In the end the very compelling subject matter here carries the day despite what I would consider an average composition.  In the end this was just over 6 megapixels of the original 22 from the camera. 

Vervet Monkey photographed August 2013, Chobe, Botswana.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/500 F7.1, iso 800, handheld.  During a rest break in which we were allowed out of the vehicle I walked to where I could see over a hill and ran into this monkey resting on a log.  The in camera composition is admittedly not very good.  I was in a position where I had too much lens to fit the whole monkey into it without it being very tight and I didn't have enough lens to compose a close up portrait in camera.  I wasn't sure if I would have time to put the teleconverter on so I took this image knowing I would end up cropping it.  If I walked closer I figured the monkey would move away, which he did when I attempted to get closer. 

Here is the image as I ended up cropping it.  I cropped from the bottom to move it above where the monkey's legs were visible.  When I am working with a close up portrait I generally crop above where the legs are.  I also cropped in fairly tight on the left of the monkey's face because he was looking to the right as we view the frame.  I then cropped in from the right to crop out the out of focus stems and have his body exit the frame on the right edge.  The resulting crop put his face and eyes at about the 1/3 level both vertically and horizontally in the upper left third of the image keeping with the rule of thirds compositional guideline.  This image as posted was also an editor's pick on www.naturescapes.net . 

Turkey Vulture photographed February 2013, Falcon Point Ranch, Calhoun County, TX.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/2500 F5.6, iso 400, full frame capture.  I captured this Turkey Vulture with a nice head on pose but at the time felt it was unfortunate that I had clipped the wings. 

This is how I ended up cropping the image.  Because I had just clipped both wings I felt it was necessary to crop both wings in from the edges to make it more of a flying portrait.  Even if I had the whole wing on one of the sides I wouldn't have included it here because the image would be unbalanced.  This cropped version ended up being published in the 2013 Coastal Bend Willdlife in Focus book.  

Short-eared Owl, photographed at the Snake River Birds of Prey Conservation Area near Kuna, ID, June 2012.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/640 F5.6, iso 500, handheld.  Of course I prefer full frame images which are well composed in camera like this one.  This owl adorned the front page of the Kuna, Idaho phone book last year!