Straightening Crooked Shots

 
Emphasizing intensity.
This is Raman. I took a shot of him during one of his first few workouts at our gym because I was so impressed with his intensity as he tackled his squats. He works hard, never complains about a workout, and never makes excuses why he can't do something.... he just does it no matter how long it takes.

I like this shot for several reasons. First, it's not cluttered with other people, equipment, etc. There's nothing to compete with the main subject. Second, I like how Raman's face is in focus while everything else is slightly blurred. This helps draw the attention straight to his eyes where all the intensity is. After learning my lesson from the first time I used my 50mm lens, I made sure to stop down the aperture a bit (from 1.4 to 2.4) so that my depth of field wasn't so shallow. This gave me some more wiggle room to get the focus just right, while still allowing me to take an indoor shot without using the flash.

Picasa's Straighten Tool
Unfortunately, I was a little careless when I took the picture and saw later that it was crooked (see below). Even when I cropped out the artificial horizon, you could still tell that the subject was leaning askew. Luckily, Picasa has an easy Straighten feature that lets you make minor corrections by tilting the photo a few degrees left or right.
 
After I straightened it using the superimposed guidelines, I cropped it so that there was nothing else in the background. It's amazing how effective cropping is at improving the quality of an image. In the original, the look of determination has to compete with the bright reflective mirror in the background. Once you crop all that out, the eye is free to study the main theme- absolute dedication to finishing the workout.