How would you crop this photo?

[peachhead]

I took this near my house.  This is the entire image.  I posted it like this on Flickr but as I looked at it more I thought maybe I should take it down, crop it and re-post it.  The crop I was thinking of was straight down the middle at that one stick standing up, making it a vertical compostion.
Another crop was starting in the left bottom, across and then up somewhere around that dark spot, possibly cropping out the dark spot.

Comments??  Criticism??  Creativity??  All welcome!!

Thanks------Loretta

[Ken K.]

Loretta,

I would crop something along these lines.  Here is my thinking.

The main item of interest is the curved lines in the grain, so I would want to focus on those.  The sky is too uniformly blue to add any interest, so minimize that.  The weeds in the lower left foreground do not add to the main subject, so minimize them as well.

Just my 2 cents.  Hope it get you thinking about what you want to do with your image.

Ken

[lotus]

Loretta,

you can do little more then just cropping, maybe something like that?

[peachhead]

Thanks guys.  I think I still want to crop out that dark spot.  It is probably just a group of moldy plants.  I usually don't increase the saturation too much on my photos as a general rule.  I do tweak it a little bit and up the contrast some.
There also appears to be two smudges on my lens making two blurry spots that I want to crop out.
I can't redo the shot because he harvested the field the other day!!!
I'll work on it later tonight and put up the finished image.

Loretta

[Rootster]

I would clone out that long stand in the middle.  It's very distracting and my eyes keep going to it which takes me off the main subject of the field.  I would also agree to limit the sky and remove the weeds. 

[Beth Schmoyer]

instead of cropping the photo, if the field is near your home, go back out & shoot from all angles, get down low & focus in on those interesting crop lines or focus on one piece of wheat at a low f/stop to give the background a nice blur/glow, or just move around out there to find the best spot to get out those distractions you don't like in this photo out.... & compose the photo in the camera to avoid post processing....just my 2cents 

cropping is OK, but why loose those pixels that you paid for 

[peachhead]

Unfortunately he just harvested this field the other day!!  So no re-takes!!!

[Beth Schmoyer]

oh well.....but you could find another field ;0)

[peachhead]

OK----Here is my new and improved Wheatfield-------drum roll--------->



What do you think???  I cropped it and also tweaked the saturation a bit and the color balance and the contrast.  The annoying tall thin stalk was THERE and I am not into cloning it out....it IS a farm field so everything isn't supposed to be "picture perfect" anyway.......  I could also crop that out and just make it a vertical composition as an alternative.

OK-----Here it is as a tighter crop.  Still not sure if I like it or not.




Loretta

PS---looking at all 3 of these almost side by side in Flickr, I think I see another crop I would like even better.  I will have to do it later today as I have to run some errands.

Later----I think I may just leave this one as it is.....  The stalks in the foreground look much less annoying than that one tall one standing in the other photo.

[jefg99]

Loretta, as usual it's much to do with personal taste. I like the horizontal crop much better, emphasizing the patterns in the fields as the key part of the photo. I also like the saturated color version.

[Yammer77]

loretta was your lens dirty?
I like your crop because it eliminates the two spots that stick out at me and make the image appear out of focus (even though it isn't).

[peachhead]

Yes the lens was dirty and I did crop out the two specks on it that looked like they were out of focus.  I need to pay more attention to small details like that BEFORE I start shooting!!!!
Thanks everyone for your critiques!!!!

[radiohead1075]

I think making it a pano would work great IMHO. There is not much visual interest in the foreground, so I would crop most of it out and concentrate on the lines in the field and texture of the trees which are contrasted nicely against the flat blue sky. (I also up'd the saturation a bit to give the colors more pop - gives the photo a bit more intensity by bringing out the contrast between the warm and cool colors).

What do you think?

[peachhead]

I do like the pano style format for this shot.  I would just have to clone out the larger wheat stalk in the middle.  Thanks for your input!!

Loretta