Creative Cropping

 
If you're like me, you've got albums filled with "too" pictures: pictures that are too fuzzy, too dark, too grainy... you get the idea. I'm a terrible photographer. For every 100 shots I take, maybe 2 come out as I had hoped. That means that 2% of my photos are made up of good shots; the rest are made up of "too" shots. Very frustrating.

In light of this abysmal success rate, I am constantly in search of clever ways to maximize my output. One trick I tried tonight was some creative cropping. The picture above is the result. Kinda interesting, I think. This is how it came about:
 
That's the original picture of Jank doing a Sumo Deadlift High Pull during Fight Gone Bad. For whatever reason, my camera decided to focus on Jank's left elbow instead of the awesome expression of pain etched on his face. (Ah $#!+ that would have been a great shot...) Unfortunately his face is just too out of focus to salvage the shot.... what to do, what to do?

Ok, maybe his elbow wasn't what I wanted to focus on, but that's what I've got, so what can I do with it? The picture is cluttered with crap at the bottom, and the red mats are partially held up with electrical tape towards the top. Ugly. There is an area of uniform background, however, around the torso- right near Jank's perfectly focused elbow.

On a whim, I decided to crop the picture so that the elbow was the focal point. Within Picasa's Crop tool, there is a Manual option that lets you crop a non-traditional aspect ratio. After trying several different rectangles, I settled on a square shape (hold down the shift key while you click and drag to keep the 1:1 ratio) and basically moved it around to see what kind of new image I could create. Through trial and error I discovered I could capture the gist of his facial expression without showing his whole face by cropping just above the nose. Cool.

As for the size of the square, I used the Rule of Thirds- a general principle in photography that suggests dividing a photograph into thirds, both horizontally and vertically. The Rule of Thirds suggests that important elements should be placed at the intersections of these lines to achieve balance. It seemed to work because as soon as I adjusted the square so that the elbow (the focal point) was near the lower right intersection, it seemed to click as an image.

After I cropped it, I used Picasa's Sharpen tool to make it a little more crisp. This tool doesn't always work- sometimes it can augment noise and give a more grainy appearance, but in this instance it offered some improvement. Finally, I converted it to black & white.

In all honesty, I'm surprised at how it came out. It's far from perfect, but it's certainly an improvement over the original picture. The original was mediocre, cluttered, and poorly focused; the cropped one is interesting and different.

I guess the lesson learned is to try anything when it comes to cropping. I never would have thought to do a close-up of somebody's elbow, but now that I'm forced to try it, it makes me wonder how many other photographs I can save with creative cropping.