Last year, my brother moved to Denton, Texas and the original photo was taken while we were exploring the city and was taken in an area that is called Denton Square. The mural caught my eye because it was the first thing you saw when exiting the Recycled Books, Records, & CDs store which moved into the historic Wright Opera House which has been there since 1900.
When cropping the original image, I aimed to emphasize the focal point of the mural by narrowing the frame onto the man and woman displayed at the center of the mural, following the rule of thirds. With the cropped image, I was able to remove unnecessary details like the cars surrounding the mural and the empty sky above it. This helped simplify the background to draw more attention to the artwork itself which is the reason I took the picture.
Hi Jonathan,
This is such a cool image, and I really like how the crop helps highlight the story within the mural. In the original photo, the mural feels more connected to the surrounding street scene, but in the cropped version my attention goes straight to the interaction between the two figures.
By zooming in on the musicians, the image becomes less about the location and more about what’s happening between them. Cropping out the cars and extra space makes it easier to notice the details and expressions in the artwork. I think your crop does a great job emphasizing what originally caught your eye and helps the mural stand on its own.
You did a wonderful job cropping this image, Jonathan! The mural is absolutely beautiful, and focusing on it while removing unnecessary fillers (like the cars in the foreground) really allows the viewer to appreciate the artwork. Not only that, but because the mural is painted in a way that resembles a blue sky with white clouds, it creates a fun illusion where the painted figures appear to be alive and real, and the building’s windows add even more to that effect.
This was a fantastic cropping job! I enjoy the juxtaposition of the bright mural and the more mundane street surroundings, but the beautiful details of the artwork are lost. Cropping the image to take away any distractors allows the eye to take in the details of the piece, like the shadows in the faces and folds in the clothes. I would not call this a suggestion or something I would change, but another technique that might be interesting to try with this picture is to add in a little bit more of the front of the bike to create more room for the picture’s “movement.”