mariposa84 wrote:
I am having a difficult time critiquing my work on these shots... its my baby girl. I realize that i have cut off some of her chin and head in the first shot and even more in the second. She is 3 years old and was walking toward me when i took the pictures (she won't stand still for me even with bribery). In a beginner photography class I took on portraiture i remember it being said that in some cases its OKAY to cut some parts off. Do any of you agree with this statement if yes do either of these photos come close? I have NOT cropped them this is just what i was able to capture.
I am having a difficult time critiquing my work on... (
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Lets think out of the box for a bit.
First, there are all variety of "Rules of Thumb", many that contradict others. They are all
guildlines, and may or may not be helpful.
What you have to do, with each and every image, is decide exactly what is the "subject", and whatever is not precisely that then becomes just another "visual symbol". Every symbol relates to the subject, more or less. If any give symbol is a distraction it needs to be adjusted in some way that lessens the distraction. If it can't actually help the viewer understand the subject, it needs to be removed. If something that would help more doesn't have enough prominence, it needs to be brought out more.
That is in great part what we do when originally composing an image in the camera's viewfinder. We move this way or that way to position everything "just right". In post processing we can clone things out of the image, and we can make things lighter or darker, sharper or not. And just as when originally setting up we can crop the image too.
You've got a couple tough images to work on for some very nice reasons. It's your kid! She doesn't look like a handful of "visual symbols" to you... You didn't mind cropping down to just her, but past that it's a sacrilege, almost. Get over it... be ruthless, it's a photograph and isn't reality.
Think about this. On the top image try cropping along a horizontal line that is just below her teeth, cutting off the bottom lip. On the second image it's almost the same, but crop just above her upper lip, or perhaps just a hair below the lip and allowing virtually no teeth to show. Hmmmm...
What
is the subject? It isn't her, it's the life and the light of her eyes. Her smile is wonderful it's true, but it just detracts from those eyes!