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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.

I actually found this post quite difficult, as I usually account for cropping before taking the image. Because of that, it was pretty hard to find one of my own photos that really needed cropping or where the crop made the new image stronger than the original. For this post, I chose this photo of my cat that I took while experimenting with black and white mode on my digital mirrorless Fujifilm camera.

In the original, the image is at a slight slant, which in my opinion adds a more interesting dynamic, similar to Gary Winogrand, who often spoke about tilting the camera slightly. However, in this case, I think it looks more like a mistake than an intentional choice. For this reason, I decided to both straighten and crop the image in a way that stays true to the original while adding a few touchups. I darkened the backdrop, reduced the highlights, and added a slight blue tone to get it as accurate as possible.

Cropping the image also adds a slight mysteriousness, turning the door into a more abstract line that divides the composition between dark and light. The crop subtly shifts the focal point while simplifying both the background and foreground. I decided to keep the copyright under my name for both versions and not license the image under Creative Commons.

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!