Spring 2026

The original photo, on the left, was taken at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, GA, in 2019. My husband and I had taken our friend Samantha, pictured, there for her birthday. Outside the museum are large rock formations, as the area lies in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. These are often used for photo spots, and we took many pictures there that day. I chose this one because I wanted to edit the image to look as though she had climbed a mountain or a large hill. The original picture was fine, with Samantha in the top third of the frame, but the parking lot in the background distracted from the focus of the image. By cropping out the parking lot and light poles, the image is once again refocused on her and the beautiful spring day. In addition, this allows the trees and the sky to frame Samantha while using the rule of thirds — placing her and the tree on the right in one-third of the image, creating the illusion that she was at the top of a climb.

This original image was made in response to findings about the toxic arsenic coloring that was commonly used for green dresses and wreaths. Although fascinating, I was drawn to this image because of the skeleton imagery and the part of the title “New Dance of Death” even before reading the article that includes the above image. I think the artwork already tells a compelling story, there is not an “issue” per se with the original cropping. However, I did really enjoy the image and wanted to try my hand at transforming it to tell enhance the story or tell a different story. Perhaps the simplest option for cropping would have been removing the surrounding text and calling it “A Dance With Death” or something similar. Or perhaps doing a tight crop near the faces with a title like “Face-to-Face with Death”.

However, I wanted a more dramatic change to the story being visually told. Another part of the image I was also drawn to was the way the ballgown wearing skeleton’s hands are clasped almost in prayer. In my mind, with this cropping we have a woman who has been left waiting, hoping, praying for something (or someone, if we take into the context of the original) for too long. Her idleness has has caused her to become death itself. (Hence the skeletal form).

While I do think the main cropping concept I used for this assignment is cropping to tell a new story, I have also (technically) simplified the background by removing the text on the edges, and I have changed the focal point and emotion of the image. The focus is now solely on the remaining skeleton, and removing the other skeleton makes this piece feel lonelier and desperate.

I recently got back my film photos, taken by my boyfriend, so I decided to dig through those for this assignment. We took a camping trip to Cooper’s Rock back in July (a West Virginia state park), and they had a beautiful lookout over the river and mountains. I found this one particular image that I thought could do really well for a state park advertisement. While I still like the wide landscape of the first photo, the second uses composition techniques like the rule of thirds to un-center me, a simplified background, and leaves room for me to look off in the distance. When cropping I was thinking about one of the examples from class where the professor mentioned creating a canvas for text, which is exactly what went through my mind here. In the green space to the left of me, I can easily envision something being said to draw visitors to the park!

“Wuhan / 武汉 | Qianjin rd urban village / 前进路小区” by toehk is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“Jazz Bar People Ambience (La Fontaine, Copenhagen)” by MSXP is marked with CC0 1.0.

The image I chose was of a street in an urban village within Wuhan, in China. The painting hanging immediately caught my eye because of the contrast between the warm red-brown frame and the blue and white painting of the birds. This photo reminds me of a lot of photos of side streets in big cities, with the worn concrete and the stripped paint showing the age of the area and the crate and cleaning supplies marking that this area, while run-down, is very much alive and not abandoned. I included the audio clip of ambient talking at a jazz cafe because the sound of jazz and faint conversation always reminds me of urban landscapes–the hustle and bustle and music and people faintly filling the background silence is comforting and warm. You might hear the sounds of the cafe from around the corner from the quiet side street of the image, especially in a big city like Wuhan, where the streets and people are all interconnected.

“Just Off the Main Road” by Aedan Bennett is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.