John Hadden Photography

This is my first post on my new photography specific blog. I hope you find it interesting, feel compelled to comment, subscribe and come back again soon!

I’m always “mining” my photos for compositional possibilities. Beyond composing “in camera” while you’re shooting (perhaps the preferred method…) creative cropping of an image can help refine and refocus the subject of your shot. Sometimes I find something completely unexpected. Here’s a case in point from some shots I took yesterday evening after heavy rain had swelled Fargo Brook, the small stream the runs through our property.

Here’s the full frame shot taken with a 24-120mm lens at 24mm,  ISO 100, f/6.3, 8″ exposure:

The subject here is the whole stream flow. I like the the smoothness of the chaotic water that the long exposure offers. It’s an okay shot, but a fairly conventional one. So, I decided to snoop around a little bit to see what I could find.  I thought that the wet elm leaves in the lower right corner and the rock in midstream might offer interesting possibilities. So I cropped down to this:

Now the subject is different. We’ve left the realm of the entire stream flow to focus on the rock and the wet leaves. The water becomes less of an actor than a background. And a pretty interesting one at that. Working further, I spread the field out a bit to encompass a bit more of the stream:

Now the rock and leaves take on a secondary role, and the texture of the water becomes the focus. I also like the little corner of green that seems to float in the upper right-hand corner. I like all three shots, but have to admit that the last two are more interesting to my eye. What do you think?