This post is a study of cropping pictures, inspired by Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge-Week 15. Which is about cropping photos.

I chose, almost at random, a few pictures that are ho-hum, at least in part because there is too much in them.

Then I tried a few different crops of each picture homing in on different subjects. (I did also tweak exposure, clarity and color vibrance a bit).

Here are the results (the captions contain my comments):

Boat and birds in Morro Bay, California:

Sock vendor in Kitui, Kenya:

Close up of his “stocking cap”.

Cleaned up a bit to focus on the people. Some of the car and building cropped out. A general street scene; it gives some context to the sock vendor.

Focus on the sock vendor.

This one did not work.Two subjects: sock vendor at lower left 1/3 and Herbal Cures sign in upper right 1/3.

Focus on the Kamba Herbal Cures sign. I still laugh when I read this sign…who needs modern medicine?

The Empress and her favorite attendant:

My son playing guitar…and The Empress:

In general I think what works depends a lot on the subject you are after and how you plan to use the picture. The pictures I worked with all had too much busy-ness. They were generally better after cropping.