I was on a phot walk around Liverpool yesterday and took this picture:
My first try and a picture I liked was this: Cropped out some of the leaves on the right.
Still not happy, so I did some more cropping. But is it now too much?
Your thoughts appreciated. Feel free to take the original and make your own adjustments to it.
Alan
Assuming that the subject is the buildings not the foliage:
It would be better if the foliage were more blurred and less dark. Think aperture diameter ... in the first image it is 24/6.4=3.75mm. The larger the diameter, the larger the blur near to the lens ... I would have chosen say f/2.8 i.e. 24/2.8 = 8.6mm diameter = double the blur for the same shooting distance. Then, instead of cropping in post, I would have gotten much closer to the leaves and thereby used fewer leaves to frame the buildings as indeed you did in your last crop.
This might be of interest as regards close-up blur:
Ted, I wanted the chain link to be not too blurred. I think it works OK in the last image.
Alan
First is the best, then third, then second.
The natural framing works best in #3 for me.
The foliage is too busy in the first two.
I see, Alan. Then another way would be to place the chain at a hyperfocal distance of what looks like about 4 meters in the first image and focus on it with a slight loss of detail at the dockside.
Indeed, looking at the first image, it happens that your f/6.4 and 24 mm focal length gives a hyperfocal distance of 4.7 meters so, if the chain is to be a feature of the shot, then setting the focus distance to say 5 meters in manual mode would be about right, with little or very little loss of detail at the dockside.
While some photographers can't function without focusing on something in AF mode, sometimes benefits can accrue from using MF like "real photographers" used to do all the time.
I liked the second crop the best. I cropped it even further so the sky and the fence offer some framing, made the blue boat the subject, deemphasized the building's colour, and emphasized the pillars and their reflection a bit. Lastly, I changed the tint to taste.
