At 07:34 PM 8/12/2005, Peter wrote:
Rick Womer had suggested re-cropping to include all of the bollard with the helmet on it; I've done that and included it here too.
Sorry, but I liked the first version better. Not cropping the bollard, puts the helmet in the middle of the frame and kills some of the "kinetic" properties of the composition. With the original cropping, my eye tended to start at the top of the frame and scan down the row of bollards to nearly the bottom of the frame, where the helmet occupied the photo's most prominent location. Now my eye starts at the top of the image, but only goes half-way down the frame before stopping on the helmet. Trying to look lower than the helmet feels "awkward" and the lower half of the frame is practically ignored as a consequence.
The original cropping effectively showed me only what my eye was interested in seeing anyway.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I suppose you could call it a "short story". Edgar Alan Poe always insisted that every element (ideally every single word) of a great short story must make a positive contribution to the whole of the story. In a Poe short story, there isn't room for the extraneous. I think photographs usually work better when treated similarly.
take care, Glen
