Which crop/placement do you prefer?

[Diver Dennis]

RTR, every professional published image you see is manipulated in some way. There are no rules in photography for being "fair" except for competitions where only certain types of manipulation are eligible. If you want good photographs you should be shooting manual and raw, which means there is no editing done by the camera, all the information is stored in one big file. Raw shots do not usually look very good right out of the camera so post processing is essential.

Editing by the camera? All the program modes you may use have the camera edit the photo automatically. Is that "fair"? I rarely crop any of my shots any more but I don't think a little cropping is bad at all to make a shot better. Processing images has been going on since photography began, with film, exposure was one of the manipulations they used. Now there are extreme examples of manipulation like in fashion magazines where they stretch models legs for example to get the look they need. There are not many U/W photos that use extreme manipulation except for art purpose. One thing I don't agree with is cropping a shot down to 1/4 of it's original size and passing it off as "macro". The thing is there are ways to tell so things like that are hard to hide.

When you have been taking photos for quite a while, you learn to frame your subjects better, adjust the camera settings properly for the conditions and start to master strobe placement. And you shoot a lot. A lot of shots of the same subject changing settings as you go. And you wait. Sometimes a long time to get one shot.

As far as reflecting reality, tweaking colors, adjusting exposure and sharpening the edges can make the subject more real, make it look the way it might if conditions were perfect. It's important to realize that you can't change an U/W photo too much because there are alway people who will be looking at it that know what is supposed to look like so too much processing can hurt your reputation. I've seen a lot of shots that are amazing all on their own.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Nice Froggie, FB.

 

[Missdirected]

Nice Froggie, FB.

I concur.

 

[RTRski]

Wow, nice shot. But I have to say, aside from the color balancing which I like in the 2nd, I still like the first better. Part of the appeal of the frogfish is the nasty stuff that grows on them, otherwise you don't really see their camoflage capabilities. Making it clear how hard it was to notice them in the first place always adds to the shot, IMO. But as you say this is for an 'anything goes' competition so there are no rules.

And very good points, Diver Dennis. Sorry if I got us off track.

 

[Diver Dennis]

No worries RTR. I do agree that some photographers may be a bit dishonest trying to pass of highly manipulated shots but you'll find as you shoot more just what terrific shots you too can take. Just takes practice...

 

[fairybasslet]

I think RTRski had the best idea. I re-cropped it leaving more of the top and less of the bottom. I think it makes for a better photo since in my original, the fish looks kind of floating right in the middle of the frame, and beneath the coral is pretty boring. With his suggestion, I have the diagonal that suggests more movement and the coral is a more interesting background. A graphic designer at work showed me how to manipulate the color of one area without affecting the rest of the photo, so I got the fish looking more magenta without affecting the color of the coral, which was looking like kind of a sickly yellow when I originally fixed the fish.
BEFORE

AFTER

I'm sure I've bored everyone to tears with the angst from this one photo, but I thank you all for taking the time to look at it, critique it and help me to make it better and to become a better photographer. I hope this is the end of it because I really am getting tired of this stupid photo.

 

[fairybasslet]

Thanks to all of you for your input, I won an award at my camera club's competition last night for that photo. I got a score of 8, 9 being the highest. I was very pleased. I feel like it was a group effort. And honestly, many of the things the judge said, like the way the fish was facing, he commented about in other photos where the animal was facing the other way. He said it didn't bother him if the animal faced left because half the world reads right to left, but he said other judges might take off for that.

 

[RTRski]

Yay for you! ...and I helped! (Just kidding...I'm picturing that annoying kid in the Shake-n-Bake commercials when I type that. )

Congrats, and no worries on the angst...I learned a lot from the sidelines of the discussion too, so I think posts like this are great.