Experiments • Cropping

Relating to my feedback in the session today, I decided to look at cropping and see if any worked better compositionally for me.

I did a "medium" crop to this photograph, where I left in the tap at the back and some detail in the background. I prefer this crop to the crop I will show in a moment, as it gives some sense of where the character is rather than just concentrating on what they are doing.

I did a tight crop, as recommended by my peers and Lawrence, and do not like this composition at all. I feel that is is too tight and we do not know where the character is. Are they washing their hands in a sink or somewhere else? In my original image, you could clearly see where they were washing their hands, it was in a kitchen sink. I feel that this made the viewer think more clearly about the path the character has taken from the chair to the sink, and gives them more of an insight into their OCD. The kitchen is clean, so the OCD element is reenforced here.

I know plan to retake my sink photographs on Thursday using the male character and the same female character shown above, but using a close crop in all the photographs (such as the "medium" crop I talked about earlier). This way, there is still a sense of whereabouts and location to the photographs but we are concentrating on what is happening rather than where it is happening.