Student Posts

I cropped this photo to focus on the emotion of the birthday girl. Surrounded by her friends, the scene has a happy silly tone, with the balloons, cake, and friends all with distinct personalities. When I zoomed in on her face I saw a different story. Mesmerized by the candles, she seems lost in thought and maybe a little sad. Gone is the energy from the small party around her. I wonder what she is thinking about.

My search for a photo started in the Flickr photo stream. After a bit of scrolling, I came across a wonderful photo of a steam engine. Being a person who appreciates the occasional locomotive, I wanted to find a picture of a train to crop. The profile this image was found on was chocked full of shots of planes, trains, and automobiles. After flicking through each image one by one, I was pleasantly surprised to find the above photo.

With a face reminiscent of the characters from the Thomas the Tank Engine franchise, she would be my muse. Although she has a wonderful engine with a robust carriage, the background was much too distracting and the focus should be on her. With a quick crop, I was able to reestablish her face as the focal point of the image.

With this new crop, we do now get to focus on her face. What is she thinking about? Where is she headed? What color is that eye shadow? With this close-up, we also encounter a greater set of details: the bolts around the face plate, the tube curving around the front of the train, and the chipping paint on the buffer. One may have not noticed those things if they were distracted by the rest of the train and the background.

The crop tool was used:

• To tell a different story
• To emphasize a focal point
• To simplify the background
• To un-center a subject
• To capture emotion

This picture was taken by me when I was returning to the stadium to my department where I work, I saw a very beautiful view, so I took out my phone and clicked the picture. Usually, I take my time and set my camera to a particular angle, look after various factors such as lighting, and then try my best to take a good picture. This was not the case in this picture as I was in a hurry, so I didn’t mind any of those factors. In the picture above the first thing that seemed off was the symmetry in the picture. On the left side, you can see the lamp pole but there is no pole on the other side, the next thing that I found that is not symmetrical is the towers on the top left and the top right. We can see one tower on the top left is visible but the tower on the right is getting covered by the tree.

The picture above also does not have any subject in focus. When we look at the picture, we see a lot of ambiguousness we can’t focus on a subject. The sun on the top also acts as a distraction. The proportion in the picture is also uneven, the land, the stadium at the back, and the sky looks very disproportionate.

My main goal before I began to crop was to bring the focus of the viewer to the fountain as the original image failed to do so. I removed the lamp pole from the left side of the image making the image symmetrical. I also removed the excessive land from the bottom as it was making the image disproportionate. I removed the sun from the image as the sun was covered by clouds making it blurry and not visually appealing. The left tower helps balance the image as the rule of thirds is applied to the fountain. The Florida State University (FSU) logo becoming clearer helping viewers to inform the image is from FSU. I believe the cropped image really changes the perspective of the image. The first image just looks like a random image without any focus or subject just showing the beautiful FSU campus on the other side the second image shifts the subject to the fountain changing the narrative of the image.

My boyfriend and I attended the Orange Bowl this past year, in which FSU was unfortunately demolished by UGA. I won’t bore you with all the silly football drama that preceded this game—let’s just say, we were fairly confident that FSU would lose, but we decided to go and support the team anyway.

Given the circumstances, my boyfriend wasn’t exactly in the highest of spirits as we made our way into the stadium. I snapped the original photo of him, which I’ve deemed “Orange Bowl Escalator Ride,” to capture the silly near-pout on his face while we rode the escalator to the third floor.

I considered several different approaches to cropping the the photo for this assignment. I knew off the bat that I wanted to emphasize his expression, so I would need to cut out some of the noise. On the one hand, I knew it would be a good idea to cut out the parking lot; on the other, I liked the interesting lines created by the overhang and his arm, as well as the greenery. I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t get rid of one and keep the others without centering the subject or cutting the photo off too close to his face.

In the end, I opted to shift the subject to the right of the photo and crop out as much of the parking lot as I could without cutting off the top of his head; this also helped to bring the subject to eye level. I also cropped his outstretched arm, but stopped at the elbow of his other arm to avoid boxing him in too much.

I’m pretty happy with the result, which I’ve deemed “Pre-Orange Bowl Blues”; I think it emphasizes the anticipation of defeat on his face, while maintaining some context clues like his FSU hat, jacket, and foam finger. I also like that it kind of gives the illusion that he’s gazing down at the crowd of fans in their own jerseys. With this crop, I believe I was able to touch on the following concepts:

• Crops to change or emphasize a focal point
• Leaves out unnecessary details (simplifies the background)
• Un-centers a subject
• Ensures that humans are cropped at eye level
• Leaves some room to move for moving objects/people
• Crops for emotion

The original image depicts a sunrise on Lake Inle in Myanmar with one boatman closer to the foreground and several others farther away in the background. The inclusion of the other boatmen in this composition creates the impression that the boatmen are starting their workday early together and that perhaps this is a common practice. 

However, the distance of the one boatman in the foreground from his fellows invites a more solitary interpretation. Cropping the image un-centers the sun and emphasizes the lone boatman as the focal point of the composition following the Rule of Thirds. It also heightens the solitary or reflective emotion of the piece by simplifying the background and focusing on just one subject. 

 My intent in cropping the image was to heighten the solitary effect by removing the crowd in the background in order to create the impression that our boatman is alone on the lake early in the morning. Perhaps he is catching a couple moments of silence before his day starts or contemplating the beauty of the sunrise on the lake. Regardless, the overall effect becomes one of serenity and reflection rather than morning hustle and bustle. Alternatively, the modification could be seen as creating a sense of solitude or even loneliness as our boatmen is now alone at the forefront of the image, removed from the larger context of the scenery or the company of his peers.

The original image suffered from a couple of problems, though those issues may not be seen as such in all contexts. The leaf on the left side of the original image is larger than the cacao pods, perhaps causing the viewer to question the subject of the image. Is the image a look at the tree as a whole, or at the interesting leaf shapes, or the cacao pods? When I took this image, I took it with the cacao pods as the intended subject. There is also a slight glare from the sun in the top left corner of the original image; the glare obscures the leftmost cacao pod somewhat.

I cropped this image to draw viewers’ attention to the cacao pod, rather than the tree as a whole. Cutting out the large leaf, as well as the glare, improved the clarity of the image. This improved its quality. I used the rule of thirds, placing the subject of the image in the right third and the lower third to improve its artistry and aesthetic. I cut out unnecessary pieces of the image, including the distracting large leaf. The crop changed the meaning of the image from being about the tree as a whole to being about the cacao pod.

This is a picture from a recent ski trip I took. In this original photo, I am far away from the people on the lift in front of us and we were hanging on the lift for almost 10 minutes while we waited for the wind to die down on top of the mountain. In this original photo, you can see the mountain and the runs on the ground where skiiers and snowboarders ran through on their way down the mountain. You can also see the cables that the lifts are attached to at the edges of the photo, which I think is cool! While there’s nothing techncially wrong with this image, it displays a lot and yet nothing at all. Am I focusing on the ski runs? Am I focusing on the lift? Nature? The composition here is unclear.

In this new version, you can see the focus of this photo is set on the people in the ski lift ahead. These five people are sitting together, waiting to go up the mountain to have some fun. There are three skiiers and two snowboarders. Do these people know each other? Are they meeting for the first time? What are they talking about as they wait for the lift to take them up the mountain? There are so many questions that pop up in my head as I wonder about these mystery people on their way to their next adventure. Whether they know each other or not, they are together.

The person in the middle has their head turned to someone, however it is unclear if they are facing the right or the left. But it seems to me that there are conversations going on this lift, that the focus group is rightfully together. I also like how in this version, you can tell they are going to their next adventure, as you can more clearly see snowboarders and skiiers going down the mountain now in the top left.