Full Frame? Crop? Which crop?

[Marina Scarr]

Finally had a chance to photograph yesterday but few birds were to be found in the wind and cold. Luck was in my favor at this eagles' nest, however. I sat on top of my SUV for this capture. Would have stood but was afraid the wind would blow me over.

This capture is full frame. I have tried various crops and would greatly appreciate any suggestions. My main obojective in a crop is to retain the environmental feel but give emphasis to the behavior.

Canon 40D, Canon 400 DO
F8, 1/800sec, ISO 500, manual mode
Hand held while sitting on SUV

Thank you in advance for any help offered.

Marina

[Grace Scalzo]

Excellent behavior/environmental image, Marina. My thoughts after looking at this for a few minutes are that you could loose some space off the top and come in just a bit on each side. That tightens it up for my eye, and at the same time keeps the structure of the tree in tact which is an integral part of this image. If you go back to this site I'm wondering if you could frame this without the oof branch, guess that will depend on where the chick is in the nest. Look forward to your final product!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Marina, hope you dont mind. Here's my take. You wouldn't want to lose the the effect of the size of the nest and the big branches supporting it.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the feeding action, sharpness and the angle is pretty good considering that they tend to nest high. I only find the OOF branch in the upper right distracting and would crop off the top and right to remove it. If it were mine, I might remove the piece of trunk above the adult bird's back.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Marina. You have captured a very nice combo of behavior and environment here. Also good sharpness, exposure, and DOF. I find that the massive branches in the URC draw my eye away from the birds so my suggestion would be to crop from the top and right - Kaustubh's repost is very close to what I was thinking. :)

[Stu Bowie]

Hope you didnt dent the roof of your SUV ;) Nicely framed between the two vertical branches, and good to see the feeding behaviour. Another vote for taking off the top.

[Marina Scarr]

Here's a try at a crop taking into account all of the generous advice offered. With this crop, I concentrated on maintaining the nest while removing the OOF branch. According to my grid, it even appears to work with the rule of thirds.

What do you think?

Marina

[Grace Scalzo]

I miss the strong architectural branches on the right side and don't care for the unattached piece in the corner.

[Jean Clark]

Marina, Very nice capture. I too like the intraction between adult and chick, I am not crazy about the piece of limb left on the right, is it possible for a crop jsut to the right ege of the know hole, although it may leave to much still of the OOF limb. Just my tow cents as you know how much I know, since I am jsut learning.

[Ulli Hoeger]

Here's a try at a crop taking into account all of the generous advice offered. With this crop, I concentrated on maintaining the nest while removing the OOF branch. According to my grid, it even appears to work with the rule of thirds.

What do you think?

Marina

Great shot, but your make over doesn't work for me. You lost to much of the nest on the right to maintain your initial intention, and the crop created an unbalanced empty space in on the left and lots of crowding in the right half of the frame. For me both birds are too close to the horizontal centerline, and with the youngster on the right hand third line the other bird ist to close to this line as well. For this to work you would have to crop more on the left and bring more focus on the pair, but by doing this the environmental aspect that makes this photo unique will be lost.

I would go with something like the version posted above. Nothing wrong with wider format if it works and here it does. Both birds are also positioned in the upper third of the frame, putting the desired emphasison the massive nest and its support structure.

Alternative a much tighter crop focussing on the feeding birds would work, but create a very different message ....

Ulli

[Jean Chang]

I love the shot, but with this repost I feel like I want to grab it and move it to the left. I think Kaustubh's composition just feels a little better to me.

Any way you cut it, though, you got a great shot! (Okay, I'm not supposed to say "great shot", but it IS!):D

Jean

[Marina Scarr]

Thank you for all the advice. You are all right about the limb hanging on the right. I was so consumed with removing the OOF branch, that I didn't notice the results of removing it.

Back to the drawing board yet again!

Marina

[arash_hazeghi]

Very nice image Marina, I like the last version w/o the limb on the right and would also clone out the branch that intersecting with the adult. Good stuff!